I'm not sure what this will do to employment in the US. I'm subject to a non-compete agreement and so are my peers. We may see tons of people leaving their jobs and poaching by competitors. I suppose that's a good thing?? Maybe companies will be incentivized to pay more to keep their good employees??
But, I'm sure the consequences will be ugly. It's going to be harder for businesses to retain talent. Plus, the onboarding and training expenses are going to rise dramatically. This could impact the already pressured economy even more.
Ironically, it's also going to be much harder to get a job because the new employer has to make a significant investment in you without a safeguard against you leaving for a competitor. And once you get the job, it's going to be harder to get access to key information in the company that can help you succeed. This is going to get weird.
Five months ago I started my first new job since 2001.
After 23 years I finally got a clue and realized despite what they had said in the past, they absolutely did not give a fuck about me or anyone else working for them.
The place where I am now is marginally better, but if there's one hard-learned lesson I'm taking into this new job, it's that it's a job, not a career. I'm working diligently on updating certs and getting to the point where I can go anywhere.
Because I know corporatism makes it impossible to keep up with inflation. At least this company is giving out 'bonuses' (which I found out were commonplace 7-8 years ago, then stopped, and now they're bringing them back) to help combat rising costs. But my last employer started doing this too: never giving raises, and using windfall money to keep everyone quiet about it.
But you know what is guaranteed to get me a raise? A different job. Employers have to offer competitive wages to get new people in. I got nearly $10k extra base pay just moving jobs. If that's the way I can provide for my family, well, the fact that I'll be spending 1/4 to 1/2 of my time at that new job training only to move on is someone else's problem.
Eventually the people whose problem that is will get to the point of realizing they're not giving out pay raises fast enough to accommodate inflation and that yearly bonuses do not suffice. And some INTJ in the company will send a message to management that sounds a little too much like "how come you ivy league assholes haven't figured this out yet and could you please stop giving us platitudes about market forces we really don't give a shit about and just figure out how to pay us", and get fired.
But the third or fourth time it happens someone in upper management will finally pull his thumb out of his ass and say "huh, maybe there's something making all these people say they can't live on what we pay them" and one of them will write a book that makes it to the NYT best seller list and he'll get all the credit and a few extra million dollars for "figuring out" the thing several people's lives were ruined over trying to talk about.
Then there will be a sea change in American business, where people will get paid what they need to be paid to stick around.
Or, more likely, most of them will just be replaced with Indian robots with master's degrees who never sleep and work for $5 an hour. They'll never figure out how much of that work time they spend working on stuff that doesn't advance any company goals, but that won't be part of the value calculation.