In the 39 years he has run his Jessup stair-building company, Bernard Poley has never seen business so unsettled.

Drastic reductions in new home construction forced him to cut his work staff from 48 last summer to 32 this winter.

Then, after the end of the Persian Gulf war, he saw signs that orders had picked up. "A month ago I thought we had started to come out of the recession," Mr. Poley said.

Now, the owner of Eastern Stair Builders of Maryland is not so sure.

He believes the upward blip in construction isn't strong or consistent across the state. "I think that was just postwar euphoria." His company is doing about 60 percent of the business it did last year at this time.

"We're looking for a turnaround," he said.

He is not alone.

After months of layoffs, red ink and dramatic management changes, even at many of Maryland's most prestigious corporations, business people around the state are desperately feeling for the bottom of the recession.

Executives of big and small companies alike are scrutinizing sales, inventory, consumer confidence -- even the weather -- searching for signs of a turnaround.

But as yet, there is no clear answer. While some business people are beginning to report optimistic signs, others say they don't yet see any indication that the much-hoped-for 1991 recovery has begun.

There is little doubt about what has happened up until now, though.

"At best you could call 1990 rough. At worst, it was a disaster," said W. Talbot Daly, a stock analyst for Alex. Brown & Sons.

Indeed, the litany of bad news that marked 1990 would have been unimaginable the previous January.

Maryland, once touted as a recession-proof state, has seen the number of local businesses filing for bankruptcy nearly triple and its low unemployment rate rise to nearly match the national average. Last month, Maryland's unemployment rate rose to 6.5 percent, close to the national rate of 6.8 percent.

Even the rich got poorer during this recession. Maryland's biggest bank and its biggest insurance company lost hundreds of millions of dollars last year. Overall, the 50 biggest Maryland-based public companies earned a combined total of $690 million in 1990 -- less than half of the $1.8 billion the state's corporate elite earned in 1989.

There have been problems in every economic sector except for one: the providers of necessities to consumers.

Giant Food Inc., the Landover-based grocery store chain, and McCormick & Co., the Hunt Valley-based spice company, have both seen excellent profits and company-wide expansions in the last 18 months.

But manufacturers, many of whom had been hurting even during the boom years of the 1980s, continued to suffer. The only difference was that the pain started spreading to formerly healthy firms. Westinghouse Electric Corp., the state's biggest manufacturer, laid off 1,200 workers early this year. And several other area defense contractors laid off hundreds more workers because of cuts in military spending.

Transportation companies were socked by soaring oil prices, frightened travelers and slowing shipments. The Preston Corp., an Eastern Shore-based trucking company, lost $18.7 million and shut down several divisions last year as it tried to stem losses. And Arlington, Va.-based USAir Group Inc., which lost $454 million in 1990, has laid off thousands of workers nationwide, including dozens at its Baltimore-Washington International Airport hub.

Construction has always been a cyclical industry, but its 1990 crash took some of the best-known developers down. Mark Vogel, a high-flying Washington-area developer who pleaded guilty to cocaine possession late last year, had his two Maryland harness horse racing tracks file for bankruptcy in January. And the David Kornblatt Co., a 30-year-old development and brokerage company that handles several downtown Baltimore buildings, filed for bankruptcy early this month.

The trouble in real estate rippled out to financial institutions, hitting the state's biggest bank hardest. Suffering from about $1.5 billion in problem real estate loans, MNC Financial Inc., owner of Maryland National Bank, lost nearly $440 million in 1990 -- a year that saw its well-known CEO, Alan Hoblitzell, retire suddenly.

Even finance companies less dependent on real estate suffered. After losing $569 million last year, USF&G; opted out of sponsoring the Orioles spring training camp, sold its corporate jet, started laying off thousands of workers and changed management.

Many retailers, too, foundered as worried consumers pulled back. Longtime Baltimore-area retailers L. Epstein and Sons Inc. and W. Bell & Co. have both filed for bankruptcy in the last several months.

Nor have the area's high-technology companies been spared. Comsat Video Enterprises, a Clarksburg-based subsidiary of the Communications Satellite Corp., lost $125 million last year and had to lay off more than 60 of its 200 employees last year.

There were exceptions in each of these fields, of course. Fiscally conservative firms such as GEICO and Mercantile Bankshares Corp. prospered despite widespread difficulties in the financial sector last year. Bucking low consumer confidence, Merry-Go-Round, a Joppa-based clothing store, saw its sales increase by a third and profits by two-thirds. And some manufacturers and defense contractors, such as Rockville-based General Kinetics Inc., reaped profits from Operation Desert Shield.

But these were exceptions. The debate now among business people and economists around the state is when the general economic downturn will end.

Steve Carley, chief executive officer of Fair Lanes Inc., the Hunt Valley-based bowling chain, said the indicators he watches -- employment and disposable income -- are still sinking.

"Consumers are still leveraged to the eyeballs from the 1980s," he said.

And that means that consumers, who drive two-thirds of the nation's economy, aren't ready to bring the bowling business -- or other businesses -- out of the recession.

Mr. Carley said that while Friday and Saturday nights are still booked at the alleys, off-peak attendance has suffered. And when families do come in to bowl, they have a "fixed amount of money. When the $10 runs out, they leave," he said.

While Fair Lanes' revenues have been fairly steady during the recession, the company has nevertheless been "ruthless" in cutting its corporate overhead and labor costs, he said.

And despite the recession, Mr. Carley said he's started an aggressive marketing campaign and an improvement campaign for his bowling alleys.

"A recession is a great time to spend money," he said. "Contractors are very flexible. Prices are negotiable. And it is a great time to hire new people."

Though his company is strong and is spending on improvements, Mr. Carley believes "the hoped-for recovery may be later this year" than most people expect.

At USF&G;, which has laid off more than 500 Maryland workers as a part of its massive cost-cutting campaign, executives say they think they've finished with firings.

But USF&G; Executive Vice President James V. Harrington said he hasn't yet seen any sign that the insurance industry's profit-killing cycle of rate cuts is abating.

So while the company expects it has seen the worst, it doesn't see many indications of widespread improvement, Mr. Harrington said. "We see no signs of sanity returning to the insurance industry."

Some bankers, too, are puzzled by the mixed signals they are getting.

Charles W. Cole Jr., president of First Maryland Bancorp, said he expects the economy to rebound as consumers regain confidence. But, he said, continuing debt problems could puncture that balloon.

"The credit excesses of the past two decades . . . could lead to a double recession," he warned.

But others say the glass is now a little more than half-full.

John W. Hechinger Jr., chief executive officer of the home center stores bearing his family name, sees evidence that the economy is finally rebounding.

"The most important indicator for us is turnover of single-family homes," he said, explaining that last year housing turnover dropped to its lowest level in several years.

Consumers worried about their jobs and preoccupied with the war stayed away from Hechinger Co.'s 117 stores late last year and early this year, he said.

As a result, the Landover-based company reported its first quarterly loss in 25 years and put off some of its ambitious expansion plans.

"But we're beginning to see a pickup this spring," he said. "I think we've hit bottom. Consumer confidence is beginning to return."

Coincidentally, he said, Hechingers is launching a new marketing campaign in Baltimore this spring and renovating five of its area stores.

"We knew the economy would come back," he said.

Many stock investors seem to be coming to the same conclusion.

Cliff Milligan, an economist who focuses on the mid-Atlantic region for DRI/McGraw Hill, said lower interest rates and the New York Stock Exchange's record-setting day last week are signs of good things to come.

The stock market is widely viewed as a leading indicator, since stock buyers are believed to be anticipating future profits, he explained.

And lower interest rates will help beef up profits at troubled banks and lure potential homebuyers, he said.

Unemployment might continue to worsen because companies often are slow to rehire, but, Mr. Milligan said, "I think the Baltimore area has hit bottom."

Of course, he warned, predictions about recessions are often colored by people's dislike of them. "You never want to admit when you're getting into them, and once you're in it, you keep wanting to say you are out of it."

SUMMARY

Executives of big and small companies alike are scrutinizing sales, inventory, consumer confidence -- even the weather -- searching for signs of a turnaround. But there is no clear answer.