24%? Aim A Little Higher …

South Carolina’s “underemployment rate” – or the number of people who are out of work, working part-time or have given up searching – could climb as high as 24% over the next seven months.

That’s according to S.C. Board of Economic Advisors (BEA) Chairman John Rainey, a guy whose revenue estimates in the past have been off the mark by no less than hundreds of millions of dollars.

In fact, if we had to pick between Rainey’s estimates and those compiled by a blindfolded monkey throwing darts at a board of numbers backwards, we’d go with the monkey’s numbers.

Even if the monkey was retarded.

“I don’t feel hopeless, but it’s hard to feel hopeful,” Rainey told the Charleston Post and Courier.

Wow.  How profound.

Rainey, mind you, basically goes in whatever direction is prescribed for him by the state’s left-leaning Minister of Economic Misinformation, Bill Gillespie.

As wrong as these two liberal, big government boneheads have been in the past, though, it’s hard to deny their basic assumption that South Carolina economy’s continues to move in the wrong direction.

Of course, a retarded, blindfolded monkey could have told you that …

Anyway, we think Rainey’s estimate that underemployment in South Carolina (currently at 20%) will peak at 24% is far too conservative, which would certainly mark the first time that term has ever been associated with Rainey.

In human terms, our current 20% rate equals 500,000 eligible workers who are either unemployed, underemployed or have given up looking … so yeah, not good.

Meanwhile, it’s been over two months since U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke (a South Carolina native) declared the recession over.