Banks are lending money. But carefully.

Roanoke real estate agents are selling homes. But there is a larger inventory of homes for sale than two years ago.

Manufacturing companies are getting orders, but they are smaller and more sporadic, making it harder to plan for proper labor forces.

Some local businesses were positioned well to ride out the recession, while others have frozen in place.

And many employees are scared of losing jobs.

These were among the messages that local business leaders shared during an economic forum Wednesday on the region's perspective to understanding the financial crisis. Six panelists representing various areas of industry including banking, real estate, manufacturing and business consulting participated in the event hosted by Junior Achievement of Southwest Virginia.

"When people start to hear positive things, it will start to turn around," said Bob Brudzinski, a small business adviser and owner of Roanoke-based Change Up Management Inc. "But it boils down to everyone is worried about losing their job."

Since October, The Roanoke Times has reported about 2,200 layoffs in the region stretching from Bedford to Wythe County.

Many of the panelists cautioned others not to take too seriously the stories of layoffs, economic slowdown and other negative forecasts told by media. Instead they painted a picture of optimism, insisting Roanoke has weathered the recession better than larger markets.

"There are also a lot of companies who are just rockin' and rollin' now and doing very well," said Harold McLeod, Roanoke market president of Wachovia Bank, a Wells Fargo Company. "You can't get paralyzed."

Nick Conte, chairman of the board at Roanoke-based Woods Rogers, said some of his clients say they haven't seen a slowdown in business but are concerned because of media reports.

"It's much like traffic slowing down passing an accident and then hitting their brakes when they get to the wreck," he said.

Still, Conte said, a lot of companies are stuck waiting for the credit markets to unfreeze.

As lawmakers finalize the economic stimulus package, the panel agreed that spending must start to happen in order to recover from the recession.

To that end, Rhonda Spangler with ReMax All-Points encouraged the audience of about 75 people to think about buying a home. She made a pitch not only to first-time buyers but to people who might want a second investment property as a rental.

She said there are plenty of properties available. In January 2009 there was 42 months worth of inventory, up from 12 months of inventory in February 2007, according to ReMax statistics.

Randy Donaldson, vice president and general manager of CEI-Roanoke Inc., said government spending will be key to seeing a recovery, saying that the current economic climate has made it nearly impossible for manufacturers to forecast their business.

There is such an aversion by companies to accumulating inventory that manufacturers are seeing 10 times the number of orders at one-tenth the size, Donaldson said.

"In manufacturing, that's the worst case scenario," he said. "My labor force is going up and down, and a lot of times we are holding onto labor hoping an order will come."

Still, he said the Roanoke region is somewhat insulated to the effect on manufacturing because of the number of distribution companies in the market. Distributors, he said, are still working moving inventory.