A chart that accompanied an article about the Baltimore County economy in Sunday's editions of The Sun incorrectly reported the number of employees hired by Becton Dickinson in the 12-month period ending Dec. 31, 1990. The correct number is 125.

When CuTronics Inc. closed its doors last April, Cathy Lane lost the job she had held for 11 years and the way of life it financed.

She moved back into her parents' Owings Mills home, began collecting unemployment, stopped taking long trips in her Chevy Blazer and cut back on personal expenses, from pricy restaurant meals to expensive shampoos.

"I have to save to go out to eat, I have to save if I want to go out to the movies," said Miss Lane, 33.

With a recession that has led to layoffs at industrial giants like Westinghouse Electric Corp., Bendix Corp. and Martin Marietta Corp., many in Baltimore County face similar straits.

The county's unemployment rate has risen steadily for the past two years, from 3.8 percent in January 1989 to 4.2 percent in January 1990 and 5.5 percent this January, state figures show.

But the problem isn't just unemployment.

The recession has worked its way down through the county's economic chain, causing unprecedented increases in the welfare rolls and in the numbers of people needing emergency shelter.

Since July 1989, the number of welfare cases in the county has risen an alarming 30 percent, with a record 15,000 men, women and children qualifying for Aid to Families with Dependent Children. Welfare increases are a statewide trend, but they are most pronounced in Baltimore County.

"We've got more people coming in for help than any time in our history, any time probably since the Depression," said Camille B. Wheeler, director of the county Department of Social Services.

To help the homeless, the county spent $150,000 for emergency shelter in 1989 and $500,000 last year to shelter an unprecedented 1,605 people, said Maureen Robinson, who coordinates homeless programs. This year, the county is rejecting 40 requests a month for emergency shelter because of limited space, she said.

The Community Assistance Network, a non-profit agency that provides shelter for the homeless, will spend $20,000 in 18 days to shelter the homeless; two years ago, that would have been enough for a year, said Robert Gajdys, director of the network.

"I can't begin to tell you how serious the magnitude of the problem is these days," he said.

Social workers, academics, economists and urban experts say Baltimore County's rising unemployment rate, homelessness and welfare problems can be traced to the economy.

But they also say the county's economic woes may be due in part to long-term changes that are giving it a more urban profile.

Rapid growth in outlying areas and the aging of older communities that ring the Baltimore Beltway have meant more urban problems, such as an increasing crime rate, more teen-age pregnancies and a rising number of single-parent families.

"The county's becoming more of an urban place," said Dunbar Brooks, a county school board member and a demographer with the Baltimore Regional Council of Governments.

"People usually focus on the city, but there's poor in the county, ++ too," he said.

While well-heeled professionals have snapped up posh new homes in Hunt Valley and Owings Mills in recent years, most of the new jobs created in the county over the past decade have been low-paying service jobs.

Since 1980, the county has gained 33,000 service jobs while losing 9,400 higher-paying manufacturing jobs, according to the Baltimore Regional Council of Governments.

Michael Conte, a University of Baltimore economist, said such manufacturing jobs are a key to economic stability.

The increase in service jobs made the county particularly vulnerable to an economic downtown because it attracted low-skilled wage earners who would be the first workers fired in a recession, he said.

"People came out to Baltimore County to take jobs, largely service jobs, and now the jobs are no longer there," said Dr. Conte, director of the university's Center for Business and Economic Studies.

Signs of Baltimore County's economic crunch are everywhere:

* Job fairs at local colleges are attracting job-seekers in record numbers. A March 21 job fair at Dundalk Community College brought out 266 candidates, an increase of roughly 50 percent over the March 1990 fair.

* A listing by the Baltimore County Economic Development Commission of the number of layoffs in the county details the closing of 29 restaurants, retail outlets and manufacturing plants from July 1989 to March 1991.

County officials say the number is unprecedented.

* At the welfare office in Catonsville, office manager Jewel Blackwell finds applicants lined up outside when she arrives for work at 7:45 a.m.

She says the waiting room is generally the most crowded it has been in 10 years. Since January 1990, the Catonsville welfare caseload has risen 36 percent and is now 1,200 cases a month.

* For the first time last year, the Community Assistance Network ran out of food to distribute to the needy at pantries in Randallstown, Dundalk and Essex. It expects to run out again this year. The agency fed 5,000 people in 1989 and 5,689 people in 1990. This year's numbers are expected to top the 1990 figure, though the agency declined to give an estimate.

* At the Baltimore County Career Development Center in Essex, initially set up to train blue-collar workers laid off in the 1982 recession for new careers, enrollment has risen from 150 students in 1988 to 196 this year. There is also a waiting list of about 30 students.

"Right now we're seeing more students than we've seen since we opened in 1983," said Joseph Shopulski, center director.

Dr. Conte, who was retained by the state Department of Human Resources to examine Maryland's growing number of welfare cases, attributed it to the economy.

"The primary and virtually the only cause of the recent increase in the [welfare] caseload was the weakening in the Maryland economy," Dr. Conte said in his 15-page report last month.

"Welfare recipients tend to be marginal employees: They are the last to be hired and the first to be fired," he said.

He also pinned Baltimore County's welfare increase partly on the number of recipients who have recently migrated from Baltimore.

Dr. Conte, who interviewed 127 Baltimore County recipients of Aid to Families with Dependent Children, said 22 percent of the new applicants among them had moved to the county within a year of applying for aid. Of the 28 new arrivals, 16 were from Baltimore, he said.

He wrote that "the caseload in Baltimore County has been rising since 1987, and migration from the city may partially explain why the caseload began rising earlier in the county than in the city and has been expanding at a faster rate."

Mrs. Wheeler agrees that the county's welfare increases may be due partly to migration -- but she feels it is mostly a case of the economy wreaking havoc on people's lives.

John Engers, a Catonsville carpenter who hasn't worked for three months, spends his mornings calling friends to find out where they might be working and then visiting those construction sites to hunt for a job.

"I'll go up to the foreman and just ask if he's got any work," said Mr. Engers, a 36-year-old father of two.

"It's tough because a lot of the work is being done by out-of-state contractors who've brought in their own labor."

With a combination of savings and unemployment checks, he has managed to pay the mortgage on the "handyman's special" house he bought six years ago. But it hasn't been easy.

"You have to eat, pay the mortgage and utility bills. But that's about all you do," he said.

John W. Duvall Jr., 54, a truck driver from Woodlawn who has been out of work since December, has tried to support his two children on a $416-a-month unemployment check and by doing odd jobs such as working on neighbors' cars and carrying their groceries.

To pay the $465-a-month rent on his two-bedroom apartment in February, he solicited donations from area churches and social agencies. He also received a one-time allocation of $225 in food stamps.

But it hasn't been enough. Mr. Duvall has received shut-off notices from Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. and Chesapeake & Potomac Telephone Co., has a long list of unpaid medical bills and faces eviction because his rent for March is now overdue.

"I never thought I'd be in a situation like I am now," said Mr. Duvall, who once earned $108 a day as a teamster. "These days, there's just no money anywhere."

Experts say some of Baltimore County's economic woes may be exacerbated by demographic changes that have brought into the county problems generally associated with urban areas.

Over the past 20 years, the number of single-parent households in the county and the number of residents over age 65 has doubled. From 1970 to 1990, the number of people over 65 rose from 45,700 to 99,500 according to Census data provided by the Baltimore Regional Council of Governments.

Single-parent households went from 16,100 in 1970 to 32,900 in 1988, regional council statistics show.

"In a place like Baltimore County that has been built up over the years, you have growth, but you're more likely to find more of the urban problems, an aging population . . . poverty, crime," said Gordon Bonham, director of the Center for Suburban and Regional Studies at Towson State University.

In the past 10 years, teen-age pregnancy has increased; wages per employee have decreased; drug arrests and certain violent crimes, such as assaults on police officers, have skyrocketed, according to the Baltimore Regional Council of Governments.

"Ten years ago, you didn't even lock your door at night. Now, you wonder who that stranger is out in the neighborhood," said George Frangos, president of the Essex Middle River Community Council.

County officials say it is vital for older communities facing such problems to find leaders who will lobby for help, whether it involves cleaning up litter on streets or increasing police patrols on dangerous roads.

Without such leadership, there is "a quiet running-down of a community," said Baltimore County Planning Director David Fields. "They sort of lose their voice, they become disenfranchised in a way."

But community leaders say it is becoming increasingly difficult to find volunteers willing to fight for civic improvements. Many would-be volunteers are too caught up in making a living -- or just surviving.

"People these days seem to be overwhelmed with earning wages and with just getting by," said Mary Basso, president of the Alliance of Baltimore County Community Councils.

Economists and social workers say that unlike the recession of 1982, which forced layoffs at mostly blue-collar industries like Bethlehem Steel and General Motors, the current downturn has hit occupations across the board: white-collar professionals, blue-collar union jobs and lower-paying clerical jobs.

"We're seeing all different types of job-seekers this time around," said Wayne G. Ching, an associate professor at Dundalk Community College, who runs the community college job fairs.

"It isn't so much the laid-off steel worker. Nowadays we're more likely to see the college-educated professional or the faithful 20-year employee who's been put out of work," he said.

That means people like Nadine Burton of Parkville.

A former supervisor and expediter at CuTronics, she was a 21-year employee when the circuit board manufacturer closed.

Mrs. Burton, whose husband was laid off from Western Electric Co. when its plant in Baltimore County was shut down, said that, like others, she has been forced to cut back spending. She is less likely to go to a beautician, buy home furnishings or expensive cosmetics, or eat at a restaurant.

She has applied for work at a dozen other companies, but none even came close to offering the $13 an hour she earned at CuTronics.

"The whole process makes you feel so unwanted," said Mrs. Burton, who is training for a business career at the county Career Development Center in Essex.

Miss Lane, who is also enrolled at the Essex training center, said she realizes that she may have to take a job that pays less than the $11 an hour she earned at CuTronics when she finishes her drafting courses.

That, she says, is a fact of life in today's economy. But she is willing to work her way up.

"You have to lower your expectations a little," she said. "It's a matter of not spending as much and hoping that something good will turn up."