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Jobs Council Shutters Thursday

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January 31, 2013

The White House will not renew President Obama’s jobs council, according to the Associated Press.

President Barack Obama created it in 2011 and filled it with prominent business leaders and economists. Its authority runs out Thursday, and the White House says it's not renewing the panel.

The AP reports the White House will focus on new ways to create jobs.

The liberal Mother Jones reported Wednesday on Obama’s job council’s failures.

"I don't think you could draw much of a line from the jobs council to a bunch of job creation, or even job creation policies that are on the current agenda—of which there aren't enough," says Jared Bernstein, the former chief economic adviser to Vice President Joseph Biden who's now a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a DC-based think tank.

For economist Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, the jobs council has proved such a political nonentity that when asked by Mother Jones for his thoughts on its expiration, he laughed. "I can't say that I've given it a lot of thought," he says. "Which I guess says a lot about it."

The jobs council’s efforts to improve the U.S. economy have been unsuccessful. Twelve million people remain unemployed in the country and the unemployment rate is 8 percent.

Additionally, the economy contracted in the last quarter of 2012 with gross domestic product falling 0.1 percent—the first decline in more than three years. Analysts had predicted an increase of 1 percent.

Published under: Jobs , Obama Economy