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

That's nonsense. This never happened. If you are going to make an extraordinary claim like that, take a moment to find a source.

Citations:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/02/20/politics/main60133... http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/20/business/in-the-new-econom...

I await your apology.

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.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/27447277/MC-DONALDS

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.