The latest jobs report was a welcome surprise. Jobs increased in January by 243,000, cutting the unemployment rate to 8.3 percent.

The question remains: Is this a blip, or has the economy turned a corner?

Earlier in the week, the Congressional Budget Report put out a more pessimistic report, showing unemployment rising to 8.9 percent by the final quarter of this year (which happens to include Election Day), and peaking at 9.2 percent in early 2013.

According to the CBO, we won’t return to pre-recession employment levels until 2019.

Why the grim picture? CBO assumes more budget cutting, as the Bush tax cuts sunset, the deficit keeps declining, and there is no further offsetting stimulus.

Facebook filed for its initial public offering yesterday. The internet behemoth could be valued between $75 billion and $100 billion, making its IPO one of the biggest stock-market debuts in U.S. history and netting founder Mark Zuckerburg up to $28 billion. While Facebook is a company defined by its users, the company decided not to follow Google's example of holding a dutch auction.

Mitt Romney, who had a resounding victory in last night's Florida primary, also wins the unofficial award for most frightening super PAC. A Federal Election Commission release Tuesday revealed that pro-Romney super PAC "Restoring Our Future" raised over $30 million last year and spent $14 million on campaign ads for the first few crucial primaries. By way of comparison, the super PACs of all the other GOP candidates spent a combined $12 million, and the candidates' campaigns have spent a total of $20.7 million.

Over at The Washington Post, op-ed editor Fred Hiatt is worried that the political world has stopped being concerned with the federal debt and is instead focused on pet programs:

Mitt Romney would extend all the Bush tax cuts and cut trillions more besides—eliminating taxes on investment income for most Americans, reducing the corporate tax, getting rid of the inheritance tax and more. How would he afford this? Please don’t ask.

The 2011 fourth quarter GDP numbers released today show a 2.8 percent growth in economic activity, due in part to the increase in spending around the holidays. But, what do GDP numbers really show? A new report from Demos, Beyond GDP, looks at the flaws in our dependence on GDP as the sole measure of progress and highlights important economic and social measures that are not captured by GDP.

If this most recent poll from NBC News and the Wall Street Journal is any indication, the public is feeling a little better about our economic situation:

[R]esults from the poll, released Wednesday, found voters feeling more positively about the economy and of Mr. Obama’s handling of it. Some 30% believed the country was headed in the right direction, up eight percentage points from a month ago. Some 60% said the country was on the wrong track, down from 69% in December and from 74% in October. […]

President Barack Obama delineated his campaign message in last night's State of the Union address. Positioning himself as a populist alternative to Mitt Romney and the 1 percent, Obama spent the beginning of his speech laying out his economic plan for the year: "We need to change our tax code so that people like me, and an awful lot of Members of Congress, pay our fair share of taxes," he said. He recommended that the Buffett Rule—which would make it so millionaires can't pay less than 30 percent in taxes—be put in place.