From the New York Times via the Indianapolis Star:

Is cooking a hamburger patty and inserting the meat and trimmings inside a bun a manufacturing job, like assembling cars? That question is posed in the new Economic Report of the President, a thick annual compendium of observations and statistics on the health of the U.S. economy. The latest edition questions whether fast-food restaurants should continue to be counted as part of the service sector or be reclassified as manufacturers. No answers were offered.

Counting jobs at McDonald's and Burger King alongside those at General Motors and Eastman Kodak might seem like a stretch.

But the presidential report points out that the current system for classifying jobs "is not straightforward." The White House found this section of the report important enough to highlight it.

"When a fast-food restaurant sells a hamburger, for example, is it providing a 'service' or is it combining inputs to 'manufacture' a product?" the report asks.

The report notes that the Census Bureau industry classification system defines manufacturing as covering enterprises "engaged in the mechanical, physical or chemical transformation of materials, substances or components into new products."

David Huether of the National Association of Manufacturers, said he had heard that some economists wanted to count hamburger flipping as manufacturing, which he noted would result in statistical reports showing many more jobs in a declining sector.

"The question is: If you heat the hamburger up are you chemically transforming it?" Huether said. His answer? No.