WASHINGTON - The private group of economists that monitors the ups and downs of the U.S. economy said yesterday that in light of "recent data," it will delay an announcement saying the recession that began in March last year is over.

The National Bureau of Economic Research's Business Cycle Dating Committee said in a statement posted on its Web site: "Additional time is needed to be confident about the interpretation of the movements of the economy last year and this year." The statement acknowledged that the recession "may have come to an end."

The committee's delay reflects recent signals that the recovery might be faltering. Federal Reserve policy-makers, acting on their expressed concern that the economy needs help, voted yesterday to reduce the target interest rate on overnight loans between banks to 1.25 percent, a larger-than-expected cut of half a percentage point.

Payrolls and production have fallen for two months in a row, the economic research group said in announcing its delay. The committee said it will withhold judgment until it concludes "that a hypothetical subsequent downturn would be a separate recession, not a continuation of the past one."

The panel is the arbiter of when U.S. recessions begin and end, based on its reading of figures on payrolls, industrial production, sales adjusted for inflation, and incomes excluding transfer payments.

"The behavior of the economy in the first eight months of 2002 indicates that the decline in activity that began last year may have come to an end," the group said Nov. 5. That echoed last month's update.

Companies cut 5,000 workers last month after eliminating 13,000 in September, the Labor Department said last week. The Federal Reserve said industrial production dropped in August and September.

"The committee waits for many months after an apparent trough to make its decision," said the group, which waited until December 1992 to determine that the economy had touched bottom in March 1991.

Of the four indicators, sales are higher than at the peak of the previous expansion and personal income is "now slightly below its previous peak," the group said. Employment and production remain below the highs reached before the recession.

Growth will slow to a 2.2 percent annual rate in the final three months of this year, 0.7 percentage point less than expected a month ago, according to 51 economists in the latest Blue Chip Economic indicators survey. The 3.1 percent growth pace expected for the first quarter of next year is lower than the September forecast of 3.4 percent.