Slowly but surly.

• Position: Economic forecasts for North Carolina by Mike Rife, senior forecaster at Duke Power Co. - Interview

Mike Rife, senior forecaster for Duke Power Co. in Charlotte, specializes in economic forecasts for the utility's Charlotte-based service region for use in long-range planning. He helped found the Carolinas Chapter of the National Association of Business Economists a year ago and is the 50-member group's first president. A West Virginia native, he holds a master's degree in statistics and econometrics from Virginia Tech. He joined Duke Power in 1979.

BNC: We keep hearing the recession is over, but things just don't seem to be improving.

Rife: The technical definition of a recession is two or more consecutive quarters of negative GDP |gross domestic product~ growth, and we had that in the third and fourth quarters of 1990 and first quarter of 1991. Since then, as you probably heard Bush say over and over in the election campaign, we've had six consecutive quarters of positive growth.

But growth at this low level, averaging an annual 2% rate since the first quarter of '91, is not enough to stimulate employment growth. In order to do that, you need upward of 2.5% GDP growth on a consistent basis, and we just don't have that yet, despite the news about third quarter growth of 3.9%. So unemployment could remain high, even though we have positive economic gains in terms of GDP.

Though businesses are in pretty good shape because they've been reducing their debt, partly through cutting their work force, consumers, even though they're cutting their debt too, are in a less secure position because of the layoffs. And everybody's counting on the consumer to lead us into this recovery.

BNC: What do you think 1993 and a new administration will bring?

Rife: Clinton does not have much room to increase the deficit to stimulate the economy. The Federal Reserve has lowered short-term rates to the point where they just can't lower them anymore, so he's really restricted in what he can do. EMPLOYMENT GROWTH, 1991-1992

Charlotte N.C. U.S. Manufacturing -0.4% -0.3% -0.2% Construction -16.6 -5.2 -3.8 Transportation, utilities -0.1 -0.3 -1.6 Finance, insurance, real estate 0.1 0.4 -0.9 Service 4.2 3.8 0.1 Government 3.1 1.4 0.4 Wholesale, retail 0.9 0.5 -1.8 Total 1.0% 0.8% -1.0% First-quarter figures. Charlotte Metropolitan Statistical Area includes nine counties. Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics

Right now, the long-term rates have started to rise, as some people believe that Clinton's going to increase the deficit. This is going to impact the first half of the...