The authors provide guidance and case studies from the U.S., UK, and EU.
Competition agencies in the U.S., UK, and EU are taking a more expansive view of the impacts of labor market concentration and the potential anti-competitive effects of employment practices.
This article discusses how competition authorities have approached the question of labor market definition, focusing on both guidance from the agencies and past cases. Coauthors Motaz Al-Chanati, Johannes Boken, J.P. Bruno, and Elisa Mariscal find that authorities across these jurisdictions are using a fundamentally similar framework for defining labor markets. When applying this framework in practice, competition authorities evaluate a range of quantitative and qualitative evidence that is informative about worker preferences, employer preferences, and the tasks performed by workers.
The article was originally published in Competition Policy International’s Antitrust Source in September 2025.
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