Tennessee is planning to pay for most of the new jobs, which it expects will cost $3 million to $5 million, with part of its share of $5 billion that was included in the stimulus for the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, the main cash welfare program for families with children. The state did not wait for the federal paperwork to clear before putting residents of Perry County back to work.

Image Jessica Hall bags pies at Armstrong Pies in Linden, Tenn. Credit... Josh Anderson for The New York Times

Other states are still drawing up plans for spending the welfare money, which is typically used for items like cash grants for families and job training. Some are likely to use part of it to subsidize employment, as Tennessee is doing, but it is hard to imagine many other places where the creation of so few jobs could have such an immediate and outsize impact as it did in this bucolic county.

A stimulus job came just in time for Frank Smith, 41, whose family was facing eviction after he lost his job as a long-haul truck driver. Then he landed a job with the Transportation Department.

“The day I came from my interview here, I was sitting in the court up here where I was being evicted,” Mr. Smith said after a sweaty morning clearing trees under a hot sun to make room for new electric poles. “Luckily I’m still in the same place. There’s a lot of people that were totally displaced.”

Scott and Allison Kimble married after meeting on the assembly line at the Fisher & Company auto parts plant. When the factory closed last year and relocated to Mexico, the Kimbles, along with many of their friends and neighbors, found themselves out of work. Now Mr. Kimble has a stimulus job working for the Transportation Department, and Ms. Kimble has one in what has become a growth industry, taking telephone applications for unemployment benefits.

“I know what they feel like,” she said between calls. “I’ve been in their position.”

Michael B. Smith, 53, who drove a forklift at the plant for 31 years, now drives a Caterpillar to clear land for a developer. Robert Mackin, 55, who lost his job, his health insurance and his home, now has a job with the Transportation Department, a rental home, health insurance and an added benefit: the state employee discount when his daughter goes to a state college.

“With a degree, she can always go somewhere,” Mr. Mackin said.

The impact has been enormous, all across the county. Even the look of the place is changing, following the old W.P.A. model. In addition to the jobs for adults, there are 150 summer jobs for young people, some of whom have been working with resident artists to paint murals depicting local history on the buildings along Main Street in Linden, the county seat.