In April 2024, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) approved a final rule barring employers’ use of non-compete clauses in certain employment contracts. Non-compete clauses are used in many industries to prevent employees from taking a job with a competitor or starting a related business within a certain amount of time or distance. The FTC estimates that one in five workers (about 30 million) are subject to a non-compete clause. The regulation, which is set to take effect in September 2024, already faces multiple legal challenges, and possibly more to come, with plaintiffs claiming that the FTC exceeded its regulatory authority. Plaintiffs in of those cases were granted a preliminary injunction in July 2024, enjoining the FTC from enforcing the rule against them while the case makes its way through the courts.
This policy watch use 2022 data from the American Hospital Association (AHA) Annual Survey Database to present the number and share of hospital workers by occupation who may not be covered by the federal protections against non-compete agreements because they work for a non-profit hospital (see Methods section for details).
The American Medical Association estimates that non-compete clauses are common in health care and affect 37%-45% of physicians. The extent to which these non-competes are enforced or enforceable is unclear, though they may alter market dynamics. Less is known about the share of other health care professionals subject to...
Over the last year, beyond traditional healthcare and federal procurement matters, the government has pursued federal False Claims Act (FCA) investigations and enforcement across high-risk areas, i...