Biden Can Promote Both Workers and Competition
The president should focus more on labor markets and less on antitrust policy.
Promoting pro-worker competition.
Photographer: BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFPPresident Joe Biden’s executive order promoting U.S. economic competition includes some welcome and long-needed changes to U.S. labor markets — but its proposed reform of antitrust policy threatens to undermine them.
The order encourages the Federal Trade Commission to ban or limit anti-competitive practices in labor markets, such as non-compete agreements, occupational licensing requirements and collaboration by employers to suppress wages. These measures are vital to ensuring that the economic benefits of rapid economic growth and tight labor markets not only lift wages for existing workers, but also draw marginal workers back into the workforce.