April 1, 1992

THE pleasure of your company is requested in a new age of informality. Do not bother to R.S.V.P. Do not get done up in black tie. The mood just now is one of casualness in dress, in manners, on all fronts. This is the time of the artfully unmade bed (rise, take up your downy duvet and toss it); the carry-out dinner; the telephone solicitor who calls at all hours and addresses you by your first name.

The Economy The index of leading indicators rose eight-tenths of 1 percent in February, a second straight rise that left little doubt that the economy was in recovery. [ Page D1. ]

ROBIN SIMONS figures that there are nearly 100 restaurants within walking distance of her office in downtown Seattle. But every weekday, she goes to the same restaurant and orders an oat bran muffin and a cup of coffee for breakfast. On weekends, she feels bereft without her regular muffin. "If I have an excuse to be out and about," she said, "I'll go to that restaurant and get one." Only her marriage to a man who enjoys cooking has prompted her to enlarge her diet beyond the chocolate-chip cookies, pizza or Thai food that used to satisfy her on nearly any occasion. Habits, she said, make life efficient in a world with so many choices. They also eliminate risk and guarantee gratification. "When I know what I like," she said, "I want it."

In their annual economic forecast released yesterday, officials at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey said they expected the region to lose another 200,000 jobs in 1992 before a mild recovery settled in in 1993. That bleak forecast comes on top of the 495,000 jobs that have already been lost in the region over the last two years. "No major turnaround is expected in the next few months," said Stanley Brezenoff, the Port Authority's executive director. Of those additional job losses, about half, or 110,000, are expected to come from New York City, said Rosemary Scanlon, the Port Authority's chief economist, with the rest from northern New Jersey, Long Island and the suburbs north of the city.

NEW YORK CITY A CHANGING OF THE GUARD Each morning as John Gotti swaggers into a packed Brooklyn courtroom wearing his trademark silk tie and sneer, a baby-faced 23-year-old named Chen I. Chung impassively enters a similar, if almost empty, courtroom two floors below. But despite the lack of attention paid to his trial, Mr. Chung and other well Asian-American gang leaders may well represent the future of organized crime, prosecutors say. A1. GOTTI CASE GOES TO THE JURY The jury in John Gotti's racketeering-murder trial is to begin deliberations this morning, after the judge excused one juror from the case and then gave the remaining panel members their final instructions. The judge, I. Leo Glasser of Federal District Court in Brooklyn, declined to disclose his reason for dismissing the juror, a woman designated as Juror No. 3. But he said it did not involve any wrongdoing by any of the parties in the trial. B3. 48 HELD IN ARSON-FOR-PROFIT CASE