Under the law, noncompete agreements will be unenforceable for Washington-based workers and businesses starting on the effective date. Employers will be barred from entering into new agreements and must notify current and former workers in writing by Oct. 1, 2027, that existing noncompete clauses are void.
The proposed Targeted Advertising Tax in Utah is imposed on advertising that is bought, delivered, accessed, or interacted with using the internet, raising concerns about its legality under the Internet Tax Freedom Act.
Utah lawmakers opened their 2026 legislative agenda with a proposal to revive a once-bedrock fixture of the American Dream of homeownership: starter homes. By streamlining permit approvals and rezoning for smaller property lots, Beehive State legislators will try to pry open a path to first-time homeownership. The bill would reduce minimum lot sizes to encourage the construction of starter homes and improve problematic statewide housing affordability.
Utah Republicans have passed three separate bills restricting gender-affirming care for youth, ignoring research they commissioned which concluded the treatment is safe and beneficial. The state House of Representatives passed H.B. 174 on Thursday in a 54-16 vote, which would ban hormone therapy for those under age 18, requiring doctors of those currently receiving care to stop writing prescriptions by Jan. 28, 2027. It makes permanent the state's 2023 moratorium, which was enacted pending the results of a study by the University of Utah's Drug Regimen Review Center.
The sweeping bill replaces the term gender with sex in the state; repeals previous provisions related to gender identity (including protections for housing, employment, and crime); prohibits amendments to the sex designation field of a birth certificate; requires use of the term "biological sex" when referring to gender on state documents;
A state audit released Friday found a litany of issues at Utah State University, including "patterns of financial noncompliance" among university leaders and staff, and poor oversight by the Utah Board of Higher Education. The audit offered 26 recommendations for improvement.
DLSE Investigations and Enforcement Employers doing business in California are well aware of the DLSE, aka the Labor Commissioner's Office, which, among other things, investigates wage and hour practices and adjudicates employees' wage theft claims. With Superbowl LX on our minds, we thought it appropriate to take a time out for a recap of the 2025 DLSE season's expansive impact on employers.
Not long ago, Vermont had a population problem. Then Act 76 ushered in affordable child care for the first time in the state's history. Vermont had a problem. Child care was too expensive. We would be paying $3,500 a month, more than twice our mortgage. Some parents were giving up their careers to stay home After daycare, you come home with maybe $60 extra a week. It's just not even worth it at that point.
California's booming economy is one of the world's largest, but a peek behind the curtain exposes the forbidding reality of a statewide job market that is ranked as one of the nation's worst. There's no sugarcoating the situation in California. Our economic growth is weak compared to other states, said Jeff Bellisario, executive director of the Bay Area Council Economic Institute.
All Florida public universities would be banned from hiring foreign workers on H-1B visas under a policy change that the Florida Board of Governors will consider next week. Next Thursday, the board's Nomination and Governance Committee will consider adding to a policy a line saying the universities can't "utilize the H-1B program in its personnel program to hire any new employees through January 5, 2027." If the committee and full Board of Governors approve the addition, there will be a 14-day public comment period.
Friday's December employment report - the last for 2025 - reinforced the biggest theme in the job market last year: It's a hard time to be looking for work, unless you're looking at a few select corners of the economy. "The job market is ending the year with a fizzle rather than a bang," Daniel Zhao, the chief economist at Glassdoor, said. In total, the US added just 584,000 jobs in 2025, a big drop from the past few years.
The Trump administration's sweeping crackdown on immigrants has taken a particularly high toll on the child care industry - both for families and providers. In California, almost 40% of the workforce is foreign-born and more than a million parents - immigrant and otherwise - rely on child care providers so they can go to work.
The findings, which are based on surveys of 150 employers from across the country, show that employers expect to raise starting salaries anywhere from 3.1 percent for engineering majors to 6.9 percent for computer science majors compared to last year's projections. In addition to computer science and engineering, average salaries are expected to increase for graduates with bachelor's degrees in mathematics and statistics, business, agriculture and natural resources, and communications.
The U.S.'s population growth is slowing as immigration has declined amid President Donald Trump's deportation push and stricter border policies. According to new Census Bureau data, the drop-off is the biggest since the COVID-19 pandemic. From July 2024 to July 2025, the population of the United States grew by 1.8 million people (about 0.5%). This was mostly driven by immigration: During that period, the U.S. added 1.3 million immigrants.
Business Insider looked at wages and growth projections for jobs that usually need a high school diploma, its equivalent, or a postsecondary nondegree award. We then took the geometric mean of the ones that pay at least $75,000, based on 2024 median annual wage data, and are expected to need more workers, based on projected employment growth from 2024 to 2034. We then ranked the jobs, with the larger the geometric mean, the better the rank.
While Newsom supports more bachelor's degrees for students, he's repeatedly stated his opposition to adding more community college baccalaureate programs that go outside an agreed-upon process in a law that he and lawmakers approved in 2021. That law said community colleges can develop up to 30 bachelor's degrees per academic year, as long as the degrees do not duplicate the baccalaureate programs of the University of California and California State University.
