November 5, 1989

LEAD: The economy grew by 2.5 percent in the third quarter, and the unemployment rate for October was virtually unchanged from the month before at 5.3 percent. But employment did soften in the manufacturing sector as sales of American-made autos plummeted. So where is the economy headed? Four economists offer their views.

LEAD: IN a remote corner of West Harbor, the major marine thoroughfare on Fishers Island, Steve Malinowski is working hard to keep his aquaculture company solvent.

LEAD: Army investigators will decide this month whether to recommend the Medal of Honor for a Jewish veteran who is said to have killed more than 500 Japanese soldiers in a single furious encounter in World War II but to have been denied the nation's highest military decoration because of anti-Semitism.

LEAD: In a city in which real estate projects tend toward the mammoth, one under way on the Upper East Side might easily qualify as the smallest of the year. Developers have bought for $750,000 the shell of a 17-foot-wide house at 344 East 72d Street, near First Avenue, and are turning it into a single-family, four-story town house to be marketed for $2.5 million.

LEAD: SHELLEY WALLACE, a lawyer who lives in West Hartford, knew she was not the only working mother feeling the stress of too much time at the office and too little time at home with her children. So she expected to hear from others like herself in 1987 when she started an employment agency, the Wallace Law Registry, specializing in finding temporary work for lawyers and paralegals.