Perhaps because the WPA is a lot more recent, it seems to be the thing Americans think of when a make-work program is suggested. I don't think I've ever heard them criticized as Dickensian; instead they tend to be criticized as socialist.
Paying people to make stuff isn't a bad idea, if your government would be doing public works (e.g. roads) anyway, you just get to do that stuff a bit quicker.
Paying people to do made-up jobs (e.g. most of the UK public sector) just destroys wealth.
If the jobs are truly pointless, they're not destroying wealth. Rather, they redistribute wealth. And even if they do destroy wealth (and you need to provide examples of specific positions and why they are counterproductive and not just unproductive) the destruction may be evened out by keeping them in the working mindset and being a normal member of society.
Tax money that goes to unproductive areas of the economy presumably must first be taken from productive areas of the economy (when I say productive areas I mean areas like manufacturing, high tech, agriculture etc. - they create wealth from scratch.) So redistributing tax from a productive area to an unproductive area acts like 'drag' on a car or airplane. The less 'drag' (less tax), the easier the 'vehicle' (the transport kind or the wealth creating kind) can reach peak performance.
It's not really wealth destruction as you've noted, but it does hamper the countries business environment that could otherwise potentially lead to even more productive jobs as companies can afford to hire more productive people.
It's just as easily to set up a useless, profitable company as it is to set up a useless government branch. So the assumption that the taxed area of the economy is productive is somewhat suspect. It's in fact possible to set up large, destructive, private bureaucracies that turn a profit. Our mounds of financial regulations do their best to make that hard, but the fact is people still make a lot of money doing it. Wealth creation and profit are two very different things.
Giving people pointless jobs creates stability, which in many cases is more valuable than any sort of physical good.
If these people would otherwise be unemployed, and if their wages are modest, then it doesn't destroy any wealth, and if what they do is even slightly useful, it creates wealth.
Here in the UK every time it's suggested the word "Dickensian" gets bandied about and that's that.