>The only thing a non-compete does is say that Employee A cannot work in their chosen field for some period of time after they are fired or quit. In doing so it offers no consideration or compensation typically in the contract.
I know you probably know this, but it doesn't have to be laid out explicitly to be compensated. The compensation would be present silently through higher wages, better perks, higher vacation etc. Workers evaluate the sum total of the costs and benefits of a job when deciding to work somewhere. It can be argued that workers don't always make the best decisions for themselves, so we should restrict their options, although to do that you have to show that the government makes better decisions for them which is sort of difficult.
An ordinary person would rightly believe that 100% of their job compensation is in exchange for doing their job, and that any additional bonus compensation for doing something else must be explicitly laid out in a separate contract.
In order for what you say to be true, jobs with non-compete agreements should in aggregate pay more than jobs without them. I do not have that data, but I believe that they actually pay less, due to the tautological competition-suppressing effect of non-competes.
"Silent compensation" definitely is compensation. To turn things around, I don't know for certain but I doubt Google puts in its software engineer contracts "we are paying you $X less in salary because of the free food". Rather, they offer a salary and list the other benefits (and negatives like noncompetes) in the contract and let the job candidate consider it.
It sounds like it would be beneficial to list out each of the non-monetary advantages and disadvantages of a job and how much money they're each worth, but in reality there's too many [1] to make that practical. Not only are there a ton of these unseen effects but their value is different for each individual.
One person may value their ability to take another job at a competitor quite highly while another may not. And that's the case for all these unseen effects.
[1] Examples of unseen effects that make the implicit wage different from the explicit one:
* having to sign a noncompete
* do you like the sorts of people you'll be working with?
* do you like the tasks you'll be working on?
* do you have flexible hours?
* do you like the place where you work?
* do you like the length of the commute to work?
* do you like the smell of the rhododendron's outside your office window?
That's a point in favor of banning it, because we have minimum wage laws and piling on disadvantages would allow employers to effectively get below the minimum wage.
In practice that probably isn't necessary because the employer doesn't see much benefit from having a non-compete. Workers are no more qualified to work for their competitors after having worked for subway for a year than they were when they were first hired.
I know you probably know this, but it doesn't have to be laid out explicitly to be compensated. The compensation would be present silently through higher wages, better perks, higher vacation etc. Workers evaluate the sum total of the costs and benefits of a job when deciding to work somewhere. It can be argued that workers don't always make the best decisions for themselves, so we should restrict their options, although to do that you have to show that the government makes better decisions for them which is sort of difficult.