The gathering of business and labor leaders, academics, and nonprofits that President Obama convened yesterday to discuss ways of spurring job growth has been derided by some as a classic Washington time-waster only useful for making Obama appear as if he’s doing something about unemployment. And yet, just one day later, job losses have declined to the best levels since December 2007. According to the Labor Department, the U.S. economy shed only 11,000 jobs during the month of November (compared with 111,000 in October) — which is much better than economists predicted — and unemployment dropped a whole 0.2 percent.