Is government spending crowding out private investment? (Is the private sector competing with the government for employees?). If so then GDP should increase
Is unemployment high? Then probably it would hurt GDP, but that depends on interest rates. If interest rates are very low, then there's very little cost to having excess employees being paid by the government: indeed presumably you can find something else useful for them to do. If interest rates are high, then the government is paying a heavy rate to subsidize these now-redundant employees. That's stagflation, which is essentially economic hard mode.
For example, what a waste it was during the Great Recession, when interest rates were basically zero, to have people unemployed instead of doing something useful, like maintaining or upgrading infrastructure. Alas!
Is government spending crowding out private investment? (Is the private sector competing with the government for employees?). If so then GDP should increase
Is unemployment high? Then probably it would hurt GDP, but that depends on interest rates. If interest rates are very low, then there's very little cost to having excess employees being paid by the government: indeed presumably you can find something else useful for them to do. If interest rates are high, then the government is paying a heavy rate to subsidize these now-redundant employees. That's stagflation, which is essentially economic hard mode.
For example, what a waste it was during the Great Recession, when interest rates were basically zero, to have people unemployed instead of doing something useful, like maintaining or upgrading infrastructure. Alas!