I'm very skeptical of the idea that somebody working on, say, nuclear security "doesn't produce virtually anything," while a privately-employed rent-a-cop counts as productive GDP growth.

Even if we take your premise as given, isn't ~700,000 a pretty terrible number? Last year's headlines were, 2024 job growth was much lower than previously estimated, at only 1.5 million. 2023 was 2.7 million. Even if we put that down to pandemic recovery, typical pre-pandemic numbers were around 2 million outside of recessions.