This week the Federal Trade Commission voted to bar companies from using what are called

non-compete agreements to keep employees from taking new jobs with competitors or starting

competing businesses.

The FTC estimates that 30 million Americans

are about one in five workers are covered by these restrictions and they

range from CEOs to hourly workers. The day after the vote, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other business groups

went to court they're trying to block the new rule before it's to take effect in

August. Taylor Jorno is the business and lobbying reporter for the Hill which covers politics and policy.

Taylor, why is the FTC or why did the FTC say they're taking this step?

Yeah, so the FTC first announced that it was going to propose a rule basically banning all existing and future non-compete agreements back in January 2023.

And they said that they were taking this step because it was under section 5 of their mandate to basically take action on exploitative or exclusionary practices by businesses.

So this is the culmination of about a year and a half of and 26,000 public

comments, the overwhelming majority of which were very supportive of banning non-compete

agreements. And yeah, the FTC took this step this

past week and as you mentioned business was not happy about it.

And talk about these non-compete agreements I think people think of them as being

executives in finance or high-tech, but it's more than that isn't it? At a most

basic level a non-compete agreement is an agreement that prevents a worker

from leaving their job to take a job with a competing

employer in the industry or to start a competing business.

And a lot of people maybe think of these as something at the C-suite or executive level.

However, a 2019 study by the Left Leaning Economic Policy Institute found that about

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