It would be nice if layouts had some sort of option to 'talk' to the map and tell it not to label things underneath layout graphics, at least in the particular data frame shown on the layout. I see this being implemented as additional tabs in the label weight ranking dialog - one for each data frame or layout in the project that the map is used in that has the setting turned on. From there, you could assign layout graphics a weight similar to how you can assign map graphics and features a weight on a data frame by data frame basis.
This would allow me to not have to convert my labels to manual annotation/graphics all the time or monkey with the placement settings so much.
ENH-000134871 mentioned here seems to be talking about map graphics, not layout graphics; the original poster does seem to be asking about layout graphics, though.
