CNBC Business News Update - Market Open: Stocks Higher, ADP Shows Slowing Pay Growth, Ford Q2 Sales Pop 7/3/24

Episode Date: July 3, 2024

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.

I'm Jessica Ettinger, CNBC. We have markets in the green now. The Dow up 25 points. The S&P 500 index up four points. The Nasdaq is up 14 points. Each of those indexes, the S&P and the Nasdaq, they're building on the fresh record highs they opened with this morning. Markets closing today at 1 p.m. Eastern ahead of the holiday tomorrow, the 4th of July. Fewer private sector jobs than expected were created in June. In the new ADP report, private payrolls adding 150,000 jobs. Bars and restaurants did some of that heavy lifting. Where were the jobs? Leisure and hospitality, 63. Construction doing a bit better. Professional business service, 25. And resources and mining down 8,000. CNBC's Steve Leisman. The government's June employment report, that'll be out Friday

morning after the holiday. It does include government hiring like teachers and firefighters and police officers. The forecast is for the unemployment rate to hold at 4 percent, near a 50-year low. The number of people who applied for unemployment benefits last week came in as expected, about 238,000. But that is more than the pre-pandemic weekly average. And the continuing claims number was again more than 1.8 million, suggesting it's taking people a little bit longer to find their next job. Ford sales ticked higher in the second quarter, led by trucks.

Ford sold most vehicles in the second quarter in five years for that company. Best truck sales in the second quarter since 2019. Also hybrid sales up 56 percent. EV sales up 61 percent. And I know some people will say, well, the EV numbers are coming off of a smaller base. But this is critical for Ford and really for all of the automakers separate from Tesla, because as they ramp EV production, they want to see those sales continue to grow. And so you see that in the second quarter with Ford. CNBC's Phil LeBeau.

The Florida homeowners insurance crisis is spreading. Premiums are soaring. It's hitting commercial real estate hard too, not just homes. Property sellers are watching deals fall through when the buyers find out what the insurance costs are. United Airlines texting travelers live weather maps to explain flight delays. United wants its passengers to know that severe weather hundreds of miles away from an airport can impact their flight. For the first half of this year, one in five flights in the U.S. arrived late, which was better than the same period last year. The insurance industry watching as Hurricane Beryl breaks records in its devastating path across the Caribbean. Universal Pictures' Despicable Me 4 opens in theaters today.

Universal is a sister company to CNBC. Jessica Ettinger, CNBC. When you're at your very top speed, it feels like you can run forever. And then there's this one moment where everybody else starts to die. And you're like, I'm not about to die. I'm about to get faster.