Stocks close higher after Senate moves to end government shutdown
Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) on Nov. 7, 2025 in New York City. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — Stocks closed markedly higher on Monday after the Senate voted hours earlier to advance a potential deal on the government shutdown, which has weighed on economic output and cast uncertainty over markets for well over a month.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed up 380 points, or 0.8%, while the S&P 500 climbed 1.5%. The tech-heavy Nasdaq increased 2.2%.
Lawmakers in a rare Sunday session cleared a key hurdle toward potentially reopening the government by advancing a short-term funding bill by a razor-thin vote of 60-40, just meeting the threshold for it to pass.
Stocks rebounded on Monday after major indices registered a loss over the previous week, a rare blemish that hadn’t happened in four weeks prior.
The economy has shown some signs of strain during the shutdown.
A report on Friday revealed a decline in shopper attitudes in November, leaving consumer sentiment at its lowest point since 2022, University of Michigan data showed.
The survey came days after data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York showed Americans’ household debt levels have reached a record high.
Those developments could hold significant stakes for the wider economy, since consumer spending accounts for about two-thirds of U.S. economic activity.
Still, markets have proven resilient over a turbulent year marked by fluctuating tariffs, stubborn inflation and a slowdown of hiring. The tech giants have defied these headwinds, buoyed in part by an investment boom in artificial intelligence.
The S&P 500 has soared 14% in 2025, while the Dow has climbed 10%. The Nasdaq has surged 19%.
The Senate reconvened on Monday to continue working toward ending the federal government shutdown, which is now in its 41st day.
There are still some procedural measures necessary for the Senate to pass a deal on the government shutdown and send it for potential approval in the Republican-controlled House.
A potential resolution of the government shutdown would restore jobs and backpay for thousands of federal employees, which is expected to provide a jolt for the U.S. economy.
The federal government would also resume the collection and release of key government day in the event of shutdown deal, allowing investors to observe monthly inflation and hiring reports.
The Federal Reserve is set to issue a decision on the level of interest rates early next month. The central bank has slashed interest rates a quarter of a percentage point at each of its last two meetings.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent speaks alongside President Donald Trump during a press availability in the Oval Office of the White House, Sept. 5, 2025. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — Employers in nearly every industry have cut back on hiring, according to the latest data, leaving job seekers with fewer places to turn.
A recent jobs report extended a lackluster run of labor data that stretches back to the beginning of the summer. While the unemployment rate stands at a historically low level, millions of out-of-work Americans face stiff conditions.
Nearly two million job seekers have been out of the workforce for more than 27 weeks, which amounts to about a quarter of all unemployed people, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics said on Friday.
At the same time, worker confidence in their ability to find a new job has hit a record low, according to a survey released by the New York Federal Reserve on Monday.
Analysts who spoke to ABC News attributed the tepid job market in part to economic uncertainty hanging over employers as a result of President Donald Trump’s tariff and immigration policies. The recent adoption of artificial intelligence tools has also diminished prospects for jobs in some entry-level roles, some analysts added.
“New hiring has really slowed to a crawl,” Mark Hamrick, senior economic analyst at Bankrate, told ABC News.
In a note to clients Friday, Joseph Brusuelas, global economist at RSM, described the U.S. as a “slow hire, slow fire economy,” saying that a sharp increase in tariffs has burdened some importers with higher taxes and cast doubt over the nation’s economic outlook.
“The impact of tariffs on hiring is undeniable,” Brusuelas said in the note, adding that the levies had “pushed economic uncertainty to the highest level in years.”
Restrictive immigration policies, meanwhile, have reduced the supply of available workers and threatened employers with higher labor costs, deepening a sense of uncertainty, some analysts said.
The Trump administration has pursued an immigration policy that features the detention of undocumented immigrants at work sites and the revocation of Temporary Protected Status – a form of temporary legal status – for hundreds of thousands of immigrants.
“We’re deporting lots and lots of working immigrants. That just stirs the pot even further in terms of employers feeling, ‘We don’t know what’s going on here,’” Michelle Holder, a labor economist at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, told ABC News.
For its part, the Trump administration downplayed the weaker-than-expected jobs report late last week, voicing expectations of an upward revision of the data and predicting better job performance.
A tax-cut measure enacted by Trump earlier this year will boost business investment and drive up hiring, Kevin Hassett, director of the National Economic Council, told reporters on Friday.
“President Trump knows that we’re super optimistic about the future of the jobs numbers, because we’re seeing a massive blowout in capital spending,” Hassett said.
The hiring cooldown has hit nearly every industry, including leisure and hospitality and the federal government, BLS data shows.
The manufacturing sector has suffered a net loss of 78,000 jobs this year in the midst of a tariff policy that the Trump administration has said is aimed at reviving domestic production. Construction, another key sector dependent on long-term investment, has incurred a net loss of 10,000 jobs over the past three months.
“This has to do with producers’ uncertainties about the future,” Holder said.
In response to the flagging labor market, the Fed is expected to cut interest rates when policymakers meet later this month. Investors peg the chances of a quarter-point rate cut this month at about 88% and the odds of a half-point cut at nearly 12%, according to CME FedWatch Tool, a measure of market sentiment.
In theory, a reduction of interest rates could boost hiring as borrowing expenses fall and businesses encounter more favorable conditions for new investment. However, the Fed’s incremental approach is unlikely to yield major improvement for job seekers anytime soon, Hamrick said.
“It will have a marginal impact for people,” Hamrick added. “I don’t see that producing a sea change in the environment anytime soon.”
(NEW YORK) — President Donald Trump over the weekend vowed to provide each American a $2,000 dividend to be distributed from what he said was tariff revenue.
“A dividend of at least $2000 a person (not including high income people!) will be paid to everyone,” the president wrote on social media Sunday, in part.
Within hours, however, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent cast doubt on the plan, saying the payout could merely refer to tax savings enshrined by Trump’s signature domestic spending measure.
A tariff dividend may come “in lots of forms,” Bessent told ABC News’ “This Week” on Sunday, adding that he had not spoken with Trump about the proposal.
The idea of a potential tariff dividend – reminiscent of pandemic-era stimulus checks – has raised questions about who would qualify and what to make of the Trump administration’s mixed signals about the proposal. Some economists questioned whether the dividend is achievable with available tariff funds.
Here’s what to know about the proposed $2,000 tariff dividends.
What is a dividend?
The term “dividend” typically describes a payout to individual shareholders, funded by a company’s profits.
In this case, the concept functions in a similar fashion, indicating payouts to Americans that are funded by tax raised by Trump’s far-reaching tariffs.
The proposal mirrors the three stimulus checks mailed to Americans during the pandemic, two of which were authorized by Trump. Those three payments totaled as much as $3,200 per tax filer, as well as $2,500 per child, according to the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee, a watchdog established by Congress.
What did Trump say about a potential $2,000 tariff dividend?
Trump announced the policy proposal in a brief message on social media on Sunday morning, focused on tariff-related tax revenue.
“People that are against Tariffs are FOOLS! We are now the Richest, Most Respected Country In the World, With Almost No Inflation, and A Record Stock Market Price. 401k’s are Highest EVER,” the president wrote. “A dividend of at least $2000 a person (not including high income people!) will be paid to everyone.”
The message did not specify who would qualify for the payout or how the policy would operate.
Who would qualify for the $2,000 dividend?
It is not clear who would qualify for the payout, though Trump said the measure would exclude “high income people.”
The pandemic-era stimulus checks enacted by Trump were made available to individuals bringing in as much as $75,000 per year and couples earning up to $150,000. Beyond those benchmarks, higher earners were eligible for smaller payments.
Last year, median U.S. household income was $83,730, the Census Bureau found.
Did Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent cast doubt on the dividend checks?
Hours after Trump’s announcement, Treasury Secretary Bessent appeared to throw cold water on the likelihood of tariff-related dividend checks.
On Sunday, Bessent suggested the $2,000 savings may instead be rooted in tax cuts previously enshrined by Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill legislation, which he signed into law on July 4.
“It could be just the tax decreases that we are seeing on the president’s agenda. No tax on tips, no tax on overtime, no tax on Social Security, deductibility on auto loans. Those are substantial deductions that are being financed in the tax bill,” Bessent told ABC News’ “This Week” Sunday.
“The real goal of tariffs is to rebalance trade and make it more fair,” Bessent added.
The dueling remarks from Trump and Bessent come days after the Supreme Court heard arguments about whether a president has the constitutional authority to unilaterally levy tariffs. Arguing on behalf of the Trump administration, Solicitor General John Sauer downplayed the revenue-raising component of the policy, saying the tariffs do not encroach upon the taxing power afforded to Congress under the Constitution.
“The fact that [the tariffs] raise revenue is only incidental,” Sauer told the justices.
Has the U.S. raised enough tariff revenue to fund $2,000 checks?
If Trump were to make the dividend payments available to anyone earning $100,000 or less, the policy would reach about 150 million Americans, amounting to roughly $300 billion in dividends, Erica York, a policy expert at the Tax Foundation, said in a post on X.
As of Sept. 30, the federal government had generated $195 billion in tariff-related revenue, according to the Treasury Department.
By that math, the estimated $300 billion cost of the dividend check proposal would far exceed the amount of currently available tariff revenue.
When factoring in only revenue generated by Trump’s new levies and deducting some negative budgetary impact from those policies, York estimated net tariff revenues of only $90 billion, falling even shorter of the $300 billion required.
Moreover, depending on how the Supreme Court may rule regarding Trump’s legal authority to levy tariffs, the White House may be forced to return tens of billions of dollars in revenue to importers who paid the tax, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget found.
In theory, however, the Trump administration could promise to pay the dividend from anticipated tariff revenue. The Treasury Department has forecast $3 trillion in tariff revenue over the next decade. Should the Trump administration choose that route, the dividend payments would add the federal debt, which currently stands at over $38 trillion, according to the Treasury Department.
Injection pens for the weight-loss treatment Wegovy, manufactured by Novo Nordisk A/S, on display during a news conference in Mumbai, India, on Tuesday, June 24, 2025.(Photographer: Dhiraj Singh/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — The cash price for popular weight-loss medications Wegovy and and the medication authorized for people with type 2 diabetes Ozempic are dropping by 30% in U.S. on Monday, according to Novo Nordisk, the Danish pharmaceutical company that manufactures both drugs.
The new monthly cost for either GLP-1 drug will be $349, down from its current price of $499, for customers who are not using insurance, the company said. The new pricing will be in place on Monday at 70,000 retail pharmacies and other places, including Walmart and Costco’s pharmacies, the drugmaker said.
The previous cash price for Wegovy matched that of a full dose of Zepbound, a competing drug from competitor Eli Lilly.
“As pioneers of the GLP-1 class, we are committed to ensuring that real, FDA-approved Wegovy and Ozempic are affordable and accessible to those who need them,” Dave Moore, Novo Nordisk executive vice president, said in a statement. “The US healthcare system is complex, with different types of insurance and various ways for patients to obtain their medicines. Our new savings offers provide immediate impact, bringing forward greater cost savings for those who are currently without coverage or choose to self-pay.”
Moore added that the price cut is “part of a larger strategy to expand access that includes building relationships with telehealth providers and major retailers, expanding coverage, and working with the Administration to lower costs for people living with chronic diseases like obesity and type 2 diabetes.”
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
