CNBC Business News Update - Market Midday: Stocks Higher, Amazon Has First Satellite Wifi Customer, ADP Shows Weak Job Growth Last Month 9/4/25

Episode Date: September 4, 2025

From Wall Street to Main Street, the latest on the markets and what it means for your money. Updated regularly on weekdays, featuring CNBC expert analysis and sound from top business newsmakers. Anchored by CNBC's Jessica Ettinger.

I'm Jessica Eddinger, CNBC. Wall Street's in the green this afternoon. The Dow now up 219 points, a half percent. Amazon shares leading it higher. They're up more than 3 percent now. The S&P 500 index up 25 points. That's 4 tenths of 1 percent. The NASDAQ's up 64 points, 3 tenths of 1%. The S&P 500 index in the green for the week now. InVIDIA shares this afternoon are down. to one-hundredths of a percent, pretty much flat. Companies whose shares have hit fresh all-time highs today include Ralph Lauren, Travelers, Aresta Networks, Western Digital, and Seagate. Amazon shares are popping onward it has its first customer for its satellite-based Wi-Fi service called Kuiper that competes with SpaceX's Starlink. It's signed JetBlue, which will offer Wi-Fi on its planes using the Kuiper service. job growth dramatically slowed last month in the private sector in the August ADP report. Just 54,000 jobs added. And that's on top of other data just out that show a weakening economy.

Facebook was a real eye-opener for me, really a weak, weak report. Spoke of an economy that's really at stall speed right now. There was no hiring going on, no growth, very limited consumer spending. And then the Challenger report layoffs up 39,000. percent, adding pharmaceuticals and finance to the sectors that we're seeing layoff. So I ended up with more concern about the economy. That's CNBC senior economics reporter Steve Leesman. Here's ADP, chief economist Neela Richardson on CNBC, on employment in the health care industry.

There's a lot of things happening in health care. Labor shortages, we're seeing that. We're seeing an aging demographic take root in that industry. So if you look at the average age of nurses and doctors and health care aides, it's going up. People are leaving the field. Immigration is going to have a huge factor in a sector like health care. Part of it is having the dollars to hire. A lot of that sector is built in on grant money.

If that grant money dries up and in health care, you can't hire. So all of this is playing out into a weaker health care number that we've been tracking for quite a while. Meantime this morning, we got jobless claims for last week, and they came in at their highest since June. Tech CEOs heading to the White House tonight for a meeting with President Trump, Microsoft's Bill Gates, Apple's Tim Cook, Facebook parent metas Mark Zuckerberg, Google Parent Alphabet's Sundar Pichai, and Open AI's Sam Altman, notably not invited Tesla's Elon Musk. Spirit Airlines cutting flights in 12 cities as United Airlines and other rivals circle to try to pick up the slack. Spirit is operating under bankruptcy protection. Frontier plans to add flights, too, aimed at Spirit's customers. Holiday spending expected to drop 5% this year, the worst pullback since the pandemic in a PWC survey as Americans face rising inflation.

The CEO of Macy's appeared on CNBC's Mad Money Show last night. He's optimistic. The consumer is going to be choiceful. The reality of tariffs are there. That's the headwinds. That's what's happening around us. But we get to control our marketing, our merchandising, the variety we offer, how we take care of the customer. Macy's CEO, Tony Spring, on CNBC.

NBC says it's already sold out of all the available commercial time for next February's Super Bowl. NBC is a sister network to see NBC. The NFL season begins tonight with the Eagles hosting. the Cowboys. Jessica Edringer, CNBC. CNBC is the network for ambitious people.