MERCED, Calif. -- With her anti-poverty budget stretched beyond its limits, Brenda Callahan-Johnson is braced for next Saturday: the day California's chronically unemployed will be cut off from the nation's jobless benefits. A drop in the state's unemployment rate to 11 percent – its lowest mark in three years – is triggering the federal cutoff of emergency, long-term unemployment pay to at least 93,000 Californians. But in the state's agricultural heartland, where Callahan-Johnson runs the Merced County Community Action Agency, a jobless rate of more than 20 percent – two and a half times the nationwide average of 8.2 percent – makes it difficult for some to believe an economic recovery has begun. "I think Merced County is used to hardships, but we are stretched beyond our capacity here," Callahan-Johnson said of the rural county that sits roughly midway between Fresno and Sacramento.