The Effect of No-poaching Restrictions on Worker Earnings in Franchised Industries

We investigate the effect of the Washington State Attorney General’s enforcement campaign against employee no-poach clauses in franchising contracts, which unfolded from 2018 until early 2020. We employ a dataset linking chain-level franchising contract provisions with employer-identified job ads from Burning Glass Technologies (BGT). We use several staggered Difference-in-Difference methodologies to measure the effect of removing franchise no-poach clauses on earnings posted in job ads following settlements reached with the Attorney General. Our preferred specification estimates a 3.3% increase in chain-specific annual earnings following no-poach removal