Few places in the country have been hit as hard by the recession as Merced County, California . Now, as Amy Choi writes in BusinessWeek , the town's leaders are looking to entrepreneurs to play the superhero role and save their economy: Home prices in Merced dove 42.3% in 2008 and continue to fall. The collapse coincided with a drought, forcing farmers to leave fields fallow and lay off employees. The dairy industry, another major employer, faced its own contraction because of a fall in milk prices and a drop in exports. Merced County now has a 22% unemployment rate. And despite a statewide moratorium on foreclosures—due to expire in June—it holds the dubious honor of having the nation's third-highest foreclosure rate. Local authorities such as the Merced County Economic Development Corp. (MCEDCO) and the Los Banos Redevelopment Agency, along with the local Small Business Administration outpost, are counting on entrepreneurs to help create jobs and restore the region's economic health. "It'd be nice to get a big employer, but we believe it may be more effective to provide small businesses the resources to grow," says Scott Galbraith, chief executive of MCEDCO. "The vast majority of the 5,000 businesses in the county are small companies. If we can get just half of them to hire one person, that's 2,500 jobs right off the bat, rather than working for 10 years to get a large employer into the region." It is an interesting test for small business owners. Read the article here .