Other fun things are enforcing the noncompete at the employer's discretion. You never know if you're out for a month or a year and they can change their mind mid way through.

The median in the sibling comment wouldn't work because unless bonuses are paid monthly the median will just be the base salary, so you'd have to do mean.

Requiring payment for the duration of the non-compete is perfect. You can tweak the specific requirements up/down as problems arise.

In most practical situations, requiring payment (of almost any amount) will eliminate non-competes, because employers generally don't like paying for labor they can't use.

What negative unintended consequences?

In practice, non-competes that pay out 200k+/yr are quite common in finance (think firms like 2 sigma, Jane Street). They will pay to keep people from going to competitors, mainly to keep their strategies and implementation details reasonably protected.

I also don't mean in response to a company enforcing it. A company would be required to pay that amount for the period covered. The employee could choose to offer them an out if the found a much better paying job, but that would necessarily not be at the discretion of the company.

It's a blatant violation of freedom and it hurts the economy.

It's wrong regardless of skill level. If the worker is skilled, then it is their right to choose what they do with it. If investors have the right to invest their capital in two competing companies at the same time (or hundreds of competitors; as it happens when they invest in stock indexes like S&P500), then definitely a worker should be allowed to work for two competitors at the same time.

Workers should be allowed to put themselves in positions of leverage using their skills as a bargaining tool.

I have had noncompete clauses in my employment contracts in CA, where they are not enforceable. I know that they're not, but I work in tech where must people are aware of bullshit like this being attempted.

I don't see how these positions are reconcilable.

So instead, make non-compete clauses really unattractive for your average employee. This would include things like paying the average wage over the last year, including any bonuses (or paying the average bonuses or prorating them another way), continuing to pay benefits such as health insurance contributions so the employee doesn't pay more, and things like that. I'd even be willing to put a penalty so the company would have to pay a bit more if their pay rate doesn't meet the industry standard in the area.

You could require them to mention it, but that's just a more complicated version of banning it outright.

The difference is the matter of liability. In the regulation case, a business found to be in arrears could be hit with a very large judgement. On the other hand, if non-competes were simply banned and employees were unaware of the law, they could still suffer under the chilling effect of an unenforceable clause in their contract. To then discover the problem later and show damages in court would be much more difficult.

Otherwise you get something like $4k/mo in the middle of Alabama, or $1k/mo in SF one of which is gratuitous, the latter is not enough to pay rent.

If you made it $10k/mo it would be more reasonable.

Just having a minimum and so a forced cost to NCs isn't enough, because you have to compare it to the cost savings it implies.

Take my $1k/mo in SF concept (noting that noncompetes are already not enforceable in CA). That isn't enough to pay rent, so it doesn't matter if you're guaranteed that income when you leave, because its not enough to live on. That means despite 1k obviously being more than 0, from a NC victim's PoV there isn't one - they cannot afford to quit, so their wages can still be easily suppressed.

A good start would be: the GREATER of the 75th percentile of wages for a given job category, and if multiple possible categories, the highest paying one that COULD apply OR the average take home pay over the last [3 years or during the time worked if shorter].

How does the rest of your comment follow on from that?

This framing makes it easier to maintain the image of hating unions/perks/whatever, but is also simpler to implement: there are legitimate reasons that you may not want high level/executive members to not work for your competitors. Whether or not you agree with that is moot: there are enough lawyers in the legislative branches to believe that it's necessary. A law like this would not be an outright ban, but rather would result in companies reducing their use of NCs to just those employees where the information that had was actually valuable.

Currently NCs have no downside for a company, so there is no reason you would ever not use one: They allow suppression of fair market wages, and literally have no associated cost. This would mean that there is: You want to put a 12 month NC on your janitors? Well you now have to pay for a 12 month vacation. Immediately - NC clauses don't say you have to work for X months for the NC to come into effect. If you work for a company for a week, you are bound to an N month NC, and so a law like this would require a company pay for that time - again, making a company actually think about whether an NC is actually necessary.

Thank you for your swift and thorough response.