CNBC Business News Update - Market Open: Stocks Mixed, Weak ADP Job Growth For August, Macys CEO Optimistic About Business 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. Modest gains this morning on Wall Street. As investors weigh weaker job numbers from ADP for last month, the Dow, up 44 points this morning. It's being led higher by shares of Amazon, which are up almost 4%. The S&P 500 index up 14 points. The NASDAQ is up 51 points. Invidia shares have dropped into the red. They're down one-tenth of one. percent 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 beige book was a real eye-opener for me really a weak week report spoke of an economy that that's 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 30. 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 aids, 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 OpenAI's Sam Altman, notably not invited Tesla's Elon Musk. Spirit Airlines cutting flights in 12 cities as you. 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. Americans did spend last month buying new cars in August, strong numbers, especially for electric vehicles, ahead of the $7,500 federal tax credit going away at the end of this month. 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 CNBC. The NFL season begins tonight with the Eagles hosting The Cowboys.

Jessica Ettinger, CNBC. CNBC is the network for ambitious people.