As the Labor Department today reported more disappointing hiring news for  January, including an unexpected jump in the unemployment  rate, President Obama joined thousands of other American employers and let  his own White House jobs council go.

The President's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness expired in obscurity  Thursday in an unmarked bureaucratic grave. Created two years ago to display the  Chicagoan's alleged concern with high unemployment, whatever its PR showcase  value had long since ended.

In fact, as a typical Obama sign of his oft-repeated commitment to creating  hundreds of thousands of new jobs, the Democrat hadn't even bothered to meet  with his hand-picked group of business and union executives for more than half  its life. Thanks, guys, you can go now.

With his last election almost three months behind, Obama need maintain the  charade no longer.

“It’s the inglorious end of a tragic and wasted affair on jobs,” said an  outspoken council critic, Chris Townsend, who is not a Republican congressman. He's  actually a political action operative for the United Electrical, Radio and  Machine Workers of America.

The latest monthly jobs report, said non-farm employers  had created only 157,000 jobs last month, slightly less that what analysts  had expected and still way below what's necessary for a robust economic recovery  to erupt.

Worse, for public perception, the unemployment rate inched back up to  7.9%.

With only one-in-four Americans professing satisfaction with how the country is going,  they can just whistle Dixie as far as Obama is concerned. He's moved on to his  next monthly campaign diversion, immigration reform -- as he has so often in the  past with, say, Wall Street reform or ObamaCare, when his shovel-ready jobs  promise turned out to be shoveling something else.

VP Joe Biden, who was supposed to drive the trillion-dollar stimulus spending  plan to employment success two years ago, fled the country last night with his  wife Jill for their regular mid-winter sojourn to European capitals.

As if to signal the president's surrender on job creation, his administration  reported Wednesday that the country's economy had actually shrunk during the  final quarter of 2012, as some Republican presidential candidate, a business executive, had warned, given the  nation's mounting fiscal and tax uncertainties.

The quarterly economic decline, which occurred as Americans were reelecting  the political team that presided over a record of more than 40 months of high  unemployment, was the first in four years.

Poor President Obama inheriting a troubled economy from his predecessor,  President Obama.