>The main idea of the non-compete agreement is that employers want to stop people from walking off the job and taking trade secrets to rival companies. I don't

>The main idea of the non-compete agreement is that employers want to stop people from walking off the job and taking trade secrets to rival companies. I don't think this is quite right. The main idea is that hiring and developing employees is hard and expensive, and companies want to have a claim on the future labor of the employee because of the investment they made. In the tech industry, recruiting fees of 25% of the first year salary are common, which is an enormous amount of money and shows how valuable anything that accelerates the hiring process is. Banning non-competes is a good idea for essentially the same reason a low unemployment rate is good: companies have to compete against each other to be the best place to work, which improves compensation and conditions for workers. It's easier when your only competition is poverty and unemployment, but that's not a good outcome for society at large.