Looking at my own society (Sweden), the idea of fixing unemployment by inventing job programs to employ people is a quite common idea. Sadly it has some big draw backs, one simply being that such large force of "free labor" is very attractive to be exploited. When there is no option to decline a job offer, some places will naturally abuse that and out compete those companies not getting free employees from the state. The Swedish government naturally have rules against such exploitation, but enforcement is a problem and far from 100%.

And I recall reading that there is statistics showing the rates of people improving their situations when working in such jobs, and if I recall right, its no better than compared to people who just get social aid and stay at home. This is one of the arguments in favor of universal basic income when its discussed here.