Employers are tapping this group of 'highly skilled' but underemployed people

Business Insider

04-05-2025

At his old desk, Alan Price sometimes found it hard to concentrate when he saw coworkers nearby or heard their footsteps as they passed.
Now, the Bank of America employee has a spot near a corner with a window on one side. The relative solitude helps him focus, Price said. When he needs a screen break, he takes in the 11th-floor view overlooking downtown Boston.
"​I get easily distracted, so sitting near the window helps me because there is less foot traffic," Price, 33, who identifies as neurodivergent, told Business Insider.
He is part of a group of more than 250 workers, some of whom often process information differently, as Price does. The team handles a range of back-office duties for the bank, including keying in hand-written credit card applications and preparing mailers.
Workers like Price represent an often-overlooked segment of the labor market that could offer an important source of talent, especially for employers trying to staff hard-to-fill roles.
While demand for desk workers in fields like tech is slowing, many employers, like manufacturers and healthcare providers, still need people for a range of roles. Advocates say catering to neurodivergent job seekers, who can include those with autism spectrum disorder, dyslexia, or ADHD, could help meet some of that need.
Some big companies, including BofA, Dell, Microsoft, and SAP, have programs designed to attract neurodivergent workers, a group the think tank American Enterprise Institute has labeled"America's largest untapped talent pool." Yet, many employers don't make overtures to this group.
1 in 5 people could be neurodivergent
Assessments vary, though one UK researcher estimates that 15% to 20% of people are "neurominorities."
For employers, the recruiting opportunity appears enormous.
Two-thirds of the neurodiverse population is highly skilled yet unemployed or underemployed, according to the University of Connecticut.
Deloitte, the auditing and consulting giant, estimates that in the US, 85% of those on the autism spectrum are unemployed.
A modest, yet growing, slice of employers is taking notice.
The share of job postings in the US that mention neurodiversity, excluding care-related roles, tripled from 0.1% at the start of 2018 to 0.3% by the end of 2024, according to findings released in March by Indeed.
Inspired by the military
One employer tapping into neurodivergent talent is Enabled Intelligence, a startup near Washington, DC. It reviews satellite images for the US military to identify and label objects like fighter jets. The data is then used to train AI models for security operations.
Peter Kant, the company's CEO and founder, told BI that about half of Enabled Intelligence's workers describe themselves as neurodivergent.
Before starting the company in 2020, he'd heard from government officials about a need for high-quality data labeling. Inspired by a unit of the Israel Defense Forces that includes servicemembers on the autism spectrum, Kant set out to recruit the workers necessary to take on detailed and routinized work.
He thought that appealing to neurodivergent workers might be a way to achieve higher quality rates for data labeling than the industry standard of 70%. Kant remembers thinking he was onto something when he met with a government client who asked Kant who was doing his firm's work.
"They were like, 'Are you sure you don't have subject matter experts in geospatial imagery?" he said.
Kant explained that a specialist had trained the Enabled Intelligence workers, but that his team had only been working for three months. Then, the client dropped the news.
"They said, 'Well, you're at 97% accuracy,'" Kant said.
Kant said the cognitive diversity within the company's teams results in more robust AI.
"If you only have one type of human brain or thought process labeling the data, then you're only going to have one approach for that AI, and you have an AI that doesn't work all the time," Kant said.
Navigating the workplace
Bringing more neurodivergent workers into the fold could require that some employers think differently about their workplaces. People identifying as neurodivergent have shared stories online about the challenges of cacophonous open-plan offices or hot-desking, where employees don't have assigned spots.
Awareness of those concerns, and the need to provide different types of workspaces to accommodate a range of workers, is growing, Neil Murray, global CEO of real estate management services at the commercial real estate firm JLL, told BI.
"Our clients are figuring neurodiversity into their planning, into their occupancy planning, into their layouts like never before, he said.
That's something Travis Hollman has seen in conversations with Fortune 500 companies, universities, and workplace design firms, he said. In 2024, his Dallas-area company, MeSpace, began marketing booths for people who want an escape from open-plan spaces without being in a soundproof box.
Hollman, whose childhood struggles with attention deficit disorder and dyslexia included failing third grade because of difficulty reading, told BI that doing more to support neurodivergent workers could be a "game changer."
Hollman said that without the right accommodations, some neurodivergent workers might quit or be fired, for example, because they can't focus.
"You've got to put them in this position to win," he said.
Building skills
At BofA's Support Services group, where Price works, many of the tasks the workers take on are ones the company once sent to vendors, Mark Feinour, the unit's executive director, told BI.
"We can do it more efficiently and more accurately," he said. Feinour oversees teams in Boston, Dallas, and Belfast, Maine, that handle some 27 million items annually for the bank's customers.
For Price, who has a degree in math and who's always wanted to work in an office, the chance to take on new challenges has kept his more than seven years at BofA interesting. That's included helping train new hires.
"I learn and I grow all the time here," Price said. "It's been great."
Do you have a story about your experience as a neurodivergent worker? Contact this reporter at [e-mail].