I was reading about how the US now considers McDonalds hamburgers to be part of US manufacturing output, whereas in the past that was credited as service since it was a restaurant.
So we must ask. Does the claim made by boston.com include hamburgers?
It also misses a lot of chinese industry. It's somewhat harder to track the business operations of a Chinese army owned construction company than a US NYSE listed engineering firm.
In $ terms there is also a big gap. The Boston big dig costs $22Bn, while a similar project undertaken by chinese army conscripts is likely to cost 1/100 of that, it doesn't mean that the US industry is 100x bigger or better - just 100x as expensive
No where in those articles does it state that making hamburgers has been treated as manufacturing.
In fact the cbs article says "The report does not recommend that burger-flippers be counted alongside factory workers."
There was a report that discussed definitions and how they affected things like tax breaks. The news articles had fun speculating how it would help labor statistics if they did start counting these as manufacturing jobs. But it was just speculation. Wild speculation.
"According to a White House report, new manufacturing jobs might be as close as your nearest drive-thru." is somewhat telling, as is the message in the report that if you agree you are a manufacturer, you get tax breaks.
It's had an effect in what has been since classified as manufacturing. Here's a slide show regarding McDonalds' operations in India.
Procurement of raw materials:
•Vegetables from Ludhiana (Punjab)
•Chicken from Mumbai (Maharashtra)
•French fries from USA
•Valla Mine fish from New Zealand
PROCESS
The food manufacturing process at McDonalds
is completely transparent and the whole
process is visible to the customers.
So we must ask. Does the claim made by boston.com include hamburgers?