Oregon’s economic success is undeniable. Oregon ranks third among states in terms of economic growth since 2001 and Oregon workers are far more productive than the national average. Indeed, as Oregon’s economy has grown over the better part of the last two decades, so too has its importance in the national economy.
This economic growth, however, has bypassed many Oregonians. Oregon’s elevated poverty levels and spike in food insecure households are a testament to this failure of the state’s economy.
Who knew that preparing sandwiches for $8 an hour involves trade secrets, or that cleaning apartments for even less requires proprietary knowledge about key customer accounts? Yet such is the reality for a growing segment of North Carolina’s economy, where employers in low-wage, low-skill industries are increasingly asking their employees to sign non-compete agreements as a condition of their hiring or continued employment—a trend that warps the free market and reduces businesses’ freedom to hire, customers’ freedom to shop, and workers’ freedom to negotiate a higher wage.
A non-compete agreement, or a covenant not to compete, is a signed contract between employer and employee that limits the ability of the employee to work for a competitor or start their own competing business for a specified amount of time (typically less than five years). Historically common in high-skill industries like software, or for certain positions requiring significant proprietary technical expertise like design engineers, non-compete agreements are now becoming more common across the economy. Only this time it’s in traditionally low-wage industries like housecleaning, food service, and home maintenance and for mid-level, non-technical positions in manufacturing that do not require significant outside education or training.
Although non-compete agreements may have a role to play in protecting trade secrets for technical or knowledge-economy industries and certain key, high-skill positions, there is clearly little public benefit for requiring frontline workers in low-wage industries to sign them, or for suing them to enforce their compliance. Increasingly, courts are siding against the employers in such cases and state governments are seeking to limit enforcement against low-wage workers. North Carolina should follow suit and enact policy changes reining in this abusive practice that hurts competing businesses, workers, and the overall economy.
In 2016, Vermont’s lowest-paid workers saw the biggest wage gains of any group: 4 percent. When unemployment is low, workers are in short supply, so wages should increase. But Vermont’s low jobless rate—5 percent or less since 2012—was having little effect, especially at the low end. For those workers wages increased less than 2 percent a year from 2009 to 2014. Last year’s gains were due in part to Vermont’s minimum wage increase of 45 cents an hour.
Virginia’s immigrants are diverse, growing in number, and are major contributors to our state’s economy. Immigrants in Virginia today are more educated, higher earning, naturalizing at faster rates and living in more communities throughout the state than in recent generations.