After 18 months of economic relief, hundreds of Perry County, Tennessee residents are back in the unemployment pool after a temporary stimulus fund dries up.

Last year the county mayor called Governor Phil Bredesen when two of his largest employers downsized and the area was devastated.

“When the recovery program was first implemented in Perry County, we were experiencing almost 27 percent unemployment,” Mayor John Carroll said. “Perry County was the second highest in unemployment in the nation. During this program the unemployment was able to be reduced to 13 percent.”

The program Carroll is referring to was a temporary buy-to-work program. Federal Stimulus dollars were distributed to private and public sector employers who then increased their workforce, putting 440 county residents to work.

Employers were able to hire bakers to bus drivers and some were paid up to $15 an hour.

“A lot of families had experienced both the mother and the father losing their source of income when the automotive companies either shut down or scaled back,” Carroll said. “I’ve got to say they’re better than they were, the situation today may not be ideal for all the families but it gave them an addition time to help stabilize their household.”

Despite the fact more than 300 are still unemployed today after the program expired last month, there are also some success stories.

Armstrong Pies hired 12 employees and after the program expired, they retained all but one.

“Our business could expand because we could put more drivers on the road, opening more sales, making more stops,” said co-owner Dalyn Patterson. “And that would create more jobs inside doing the cooking and packaging.”

Carroll told Fox News although there are still hundreds of families in a pinch, he would do it again, if he had the chance because at least 100 people are working full-time.

“We knew when the program was implemented that it would be a band aid, that it would not be a permanent fix,” he said. “This would help us through a challenging time but it was not a solution. This bought us some time to try and recruit business to try and help existing business and hopefully grow.”