Wednesday's Final Takeaways: UBER Cuts 3,300 Jobs & TSLA China EV Sales Slow

**Marley Kayden** (0:02)
Welcome back to Market Unclosed. I'm Marley Kayden here in Chicago alongside Sam Vadas at the New York Stock Exchange. Here's some final thoughts on today's session. The US private sector added just 38,000 jobs in August. That came in below economist expectations for a gain of roughly 47,000 and was down from a revised 46,000 in July. This ADP data marked the weakest monthly increase since January with gains concentrated in education, health services, construction and leisure and hospitality. While manufacturing and professional services shed jobs. The report also showed wage growth remaining relatively contained with annual base pay up three percent for workers who stayed in their jobs. The big question now is whether Friday's much more closely watch government jobs report confirms the labor market slowdown.
Staying with the labor market here, about 3,000 Uber employees are going to be looking for work as the company announced it is laying off 10 percent of its workforce today. The CEO said the reduction is meant to make the company, quote, simpler and faster and create more capacity to invest in our future. Those investment plans include committing more than $10 billion to autonomous vehicles in the coming years. The ride-hailing service did not attribute the cuts to AI, as we have seen with many other tech layoffs so far this year, which I did think was interesting, Sam. They didn't say anything about AI in the note or in any of the commentary they gave. Uber ended the day up about 1.6 percent higher. But what caught your eye during the session today?

**Sam Vadas** (1:28)
A couple of corporates making news overseas that we didn't get around to touching on today. Marley Chevron saying it plans to more than double oil production in Venezuela over the next five years. The company is making a $7 billion investment in the country, and it plans to expand production to 600,000 barrels compared to the current roughly 280,000. Chevron has continued to operate in Venezuela while its peers Exxon and ConocoPhillips have remained out of the country since leaving in 2007, and Tesla's made in China sales slowed to 3.6% year over year in August. It's the 10th month of growth, but marks a sharp drop from the double digit gains we saw in July. Month over month sales fell nearly 8%.
The data tracks sales of the Model 3 and the Model Y vehicles from the Shanghai factory and does include exports. Registration data out of Europe has shown diverging performance for Tesla across the region. The company does face competition in China from cheaper local rivals, and BYD is also giving Tesla a bit of a run for its money overseas. The Chinese car maker just made more revenue from outside of China for the first time ever in the first half. But heading into tomorrow, Marley, what are you going to be looking out for?

**Marley Kayden** (2:37)
We've got a few more earnings on the way tomorrow. We've got Sienna, Victoria's Secret, the Campbell's Company all reporting in the morning. After the close, we'll have DocuSign, Lululemon, Zscaler and Planet Labs. Quite a bit of diversity in those names. We've got AI infrastructure, retail, consumer staples, software, cyber and the space economy. So a little bit of something for everyone before we enter that lull until October. But what will you be watching for, Sam?

**Sam Vadas** (3:01)
I'm going to be looking at the data. So obviously we've got challenging jobs in the morning. We've got jobless claims that we'll get, which we obviously see weekly coming through. Let's see if that continues to paint the picture of what we've heard from the ADP. And of course, the Joltz is a prelude to jobs on Friday. Then we'll have the ISM non-manufacturing PMI, of course carrying a much greater weight than the manufacturing PMI we got earlier in the week because it is a services-led economy. So that could potentially move the needle. We'll be watching, Marley.

**Marley Kayden** (3:29)
We will certainly be watching, but that is going to do it for us today on Market Unclosed. For Sam Vadas, I'm Marley Kayden. Be sure to download our Schwab Network app available in the Apple App Store for free and tune in 24-7 on schwabnetwork.com. We hope you have a great rest of your Wednesday. Thanks for being with us today.