Building Blue-Collar … Burgers?
Or are they? According to a White House report, new manufacturing jobs might be as close as your nearest drive-thru.
The annual Economic Report of the President has already stirred controversy by suggesting the loss of U.S. jobs overseas might be beneficial, and predicting that a whopping 2.6 million jobs will be created in the country this year.
As first reported by The New York Times, the fast food issue is taken up on page 73 of the lengthy report in a special box headlined "What is manufacturing?"
"The definition of a manufactured product," the box reads, "is not straightforward."
"When a fast-food restaurant sells a hamburger, for example, is it providing a 'service' or is it combining inputs to 'manufacture' a product?" it asks.
The report does not recommend that burger-flippers be counted alongside factory workers.
Instead, it concludes that the fuzziness of the manufacturing definition is problematic, because policies — like, for example, a tax credit for manufacturers — may miss their target if the definition is overly broad or narrow.
But reclassifying fast food workers as manufacturing employees could have other advantages for the administration.
It would offset somewhat the ongoing loss of manufacturing jobs in national employment statistics. Since the month President Bush was inaugurated, the economy has lost about 2.7 million manufacturing jobs, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. That continues a long-term trend.
And the move would make the growth in service sector jobs, some of which pay low wages, more appealing. According to government figures, since January 2001 the economy has generated more than 600,000 new service-providing jobs.
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