CNBC Business News Update - Market Midday: Stocks Slightly Higher, Announced Layoffs Hit 5 Year High, WBD Bids Are In 12/4/25

Episode Date: December 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 and reported by CNBC's Jessica Ettinger. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

I'm Jessica Eddinger. CNBC Wall Street this afternoon is now barely in the green, but the major averages have turned slightly higher. The Dow up three points. The S&P 500 index is up four points, and the NASDAQ is up 24 points. Shares of Nvidia are solidly higher. They're up more than 2% this afternoon. There is a lot of optimism that stocks will go higher as the month and year wrap up. Earnings estimates are still going higher. Seasonality is still there. Since the seasonal strong period began, the market's up small.

So there's still about 4% higher just to get to the average what we typically see this time of the year. Cantor Fitzgerald's Eric Johnston on CNBC. But some investors are worried that the labor market is rolling over. Layoff announcements this year have hit 1.1 million as of November. the most announced job cuts in five years when the pandemic hit. Employers announced 71,321 layoffs last month. This is according to the job placement firm Challenger Gray and Christmas. And it is a 24% jump from a year earlier.

That Challenger data has continued to point to elevated layoffs and is seen as problematic for the labor market. A lot of the other data does point to weakness, ADP, negative number on private sector jobs. CNBC's Sarah Eisen, and here's a take from CNBC's Mike Santoli. Confirms somewhat kind of low metabolism labor market. The other piece of it is you have like 200,000 plus boomers retiring every month, and I just think companies are able to have attrition do part of the work. Now outplacement firm challenger, Gray and Christmas says employers announcing more layoffs tell them they're either restructuring, responding to economic conditions,

or simply closing the business. Morgan Stanley's chief investment officer tells CNBC the job picture likely won't be getting much better. Jobs are really the linchpin to how we need to think about the economic future. I mean, this is what everybody's going to react to. So the jobs data that's going to come out after the FOMC meeting, when that comes out, I fully expect the jobs data to get worse. Morgan Stanley's Jim Caron on CNBC. Bids for Warner Brothers Discovery are in Paramount Skydance.

wants to buy the media giant that owns a movie studio, HBO, Max, and CNN. But so do CNBC parent Comcast, Disney, and Netflix. Warner Brothers Discovery executives want to have the sale process wrapped up by the end of this month. It's been made a couple of times by all the parties. There is an expectation now that Paramount, if it wants to win, it's going to have to come back at an even higher price. CNBC's David Faber. On Friday's watch list, we get some early. earnings from Victoria's Secret. We get a peak at inflation with the PCE Personal Consumption

Expenditures Report. Sports Illustrated will announce it Sports Person of the Year. New in theaters, Universal's five nights at Freddy's 2. Sony's merrily we roll along. IFC's 100 nights of Hero and Lionsgate's four and a half hour. Kill Bill the whole bloody affair. The Powerball jackpot Friday night. $820 million. Jessica Eddinger, CNBC.