There’s nothing like living close to the grandkids.

It is something Julie Wehmeyer Longstreet can vouch for since she left Kingston in January and relocated just outside of Dallas, Texas, where her daughter and son-in-law are raising their baby girl.

These days, Wehmeyer Longstreet is feeling more upbeat, and her Facebook posts reflect that. She’s been showing off lots of photos of her 11-month-old granddaughter, Morgan, and clearly is enjoying being part of her life.

But it wasn’t just her granddaughter that drew her to the Lone Star state.

For Wehmeyer Longstreet, it was just as much about survival.

The former Kingston businesswoman says she is living the good life compared to her life in Ulster County, where she said it was a day-to-day struggle to make ends meet and find work once her Uptown boutique folded.

“Every day, I miss Kingston, my friends and the culture, but here, I’m able to afford to live and have a lifestyle,” she said. “My rent is a lot less, and I don’t pay income tax. I don’t have to worry when I go to the grocery store, and I can go to the dentist. It’s a whole different lifestyle. It’s hard in New York. Not too many people can make a living there.”

Wehmeyer Longstreet considers herself an example.

After she closed her Edelweiss Soap Company at 38 John St. last summer, she moved the business to a kiosk at the Hudson Valley Mall, and on some days, made as little as $15 in sales.

Eventually, she was forced to take a part-time job at Target at the Hudson Valley Mall, making $8 an hour.

“I didn’t have a choice. I needed the money,” she said. “If it wasn’t for my friends who pitched in to help, I don’t know where I’d be.”

Until recently, Wehmeyer Longstreet was among the millions of so-called “underemployed” Americans, a group that the Gallup organization tracks daily.

For the week of May 12, a total of 16.2 percent of U.S. adults 18 and older were underemployed, Gallup reported.

The term “underemployed” refers to those who are overqualified for the work they are doing or working for lower pay and fewer hours than they desire, according to Gallup researchers.

“That term — underemployment — comes right out of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and it’s a huge problem,” said Wendell Cox, a principal with the St. Louis-based Demographia, an international public policy firm.

“Anybody who believes that the serious depressing aftermath of the recession is over doesn’t understand what’s on the ground,” he said in a recent telephone interview. “The reason why underemployment is so important … is because the unemployment number does not capture the number of people who have dropped out, the so-called ‘discouraged workers.’ Then, there are those in this country who can’t find full-time employment.

“The real question among those in this country who would like to work full-time is how many aren’t able to because the employment opportunities just aren’t there, and that’s a significant issue,” Cox said.

That was the case for Wehmeyer Longstreet, who said she moved to Kingston in 2010 because she wanted to be a part of the culturally vibrant Northeast.

“I wanted to live in an old town with history, and Kingston fit the bill,” she said. “It was almost like it found me. I still love it there.”

For the first two years, she commuted to Manhattan to work as a client services manager for an insurance company.

Wehmeyer Longstreet, who studied at the University of Houston, opened the Edelweiss Soap Company in 2012, investing $30,000 of her savings.

The boutique, which featured artisan soaps and lotions, did well the first year, but Wehmeyer Longstreet struggled through 2013 until she finally closed it at the end of July.

Money was tight and she found herself desperate to find work.

“I applied all over the Hudson valley … and the only job I could get was 10 hours a week at Target,” she said.

Today, Wehmeyer Longstreet works as a secretary for a certified public accountant in Dallas, earning more than $15 an hour.

“The irony is I actually make more in my job here than I did in Manhattan,” she said. “If you want to find work in Texas, you can find work and live a decent life. It’s sad that the powers that be can’t grasp that in New York.”

Such talk doesn’t surprise Cox.

“New York has tried everything it can to destroy business — at least for four decades,” he said, citing high taxation and stifling regulations.

An outcome of that is the scarcity of good-paying jobs, one of the contributing factors that has driven New Yorkers out of the state, Cox said.

A report by the Empire Center for New York State Policy backs him up, finding that between 2000 and 2008, some 1.5 million New Yorkers left the state, representing the largest out-of-state migration in the nation.

“If the jobs had been there, they wouldn’t have left the state. New York State has … implemented regulations and tax regimes that have made it impossible to improve jobs,” Cox said. 

That simply is not the case, said Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s office, which just released the latest jobs figures for April. 

The state’s unemployment rate fell by 0.2 percent to 6.7 percent, the “lowest level since December 2008,” according to figures released May 15 by the New York State Department of Labor.

Ulster County led the state in the percentage of new jobs created, with 3.1 percent growth, the labor department reported.

In addition, the state’s private sector job count grew by 2,500 in April, totaling 7,543,000 — an all-time high, Cuomo’s office said.

In fact, the “New York State economy has added 440,400 private sector jobs and experienced employment growth in 35 of the past 40 months,” the Governor’s Office added. “New York remains one of only 17 states to have regained all of the private sector jobs lost during the recession,” it said.

The Governor’s Office further noted that New York has the “lowest business tax rate — 6.5 percent — since 1968,” and the “lowest manufacturer tax rate — 0 percent — since 1917.”

In addition, the state “put in place Start-UP NY — zero taxes on college campuses statewide to attract businesses,” said Cuomo’s press agent, Gareth Rhodes.

 On a broader scale, the Bureau of Labor Statistics pointed out in mid-May that unemployment rates have dropped in 43 states, falling below April’s national average of 6.3 percent.

Texas topped the pack in job creation with 64,100 new positions, followed by California’s 56,100 and Florida’s 34,000.

Cox, however, isn’t so sure it’s all good news.

“It is premature to herald the return of prosperity,” he said. “Only in the last month (April) did U.S. employment rise above the 2007 peak, despite the addition of at least 15 million people to the population. Only once before was there a longer period … of employment stagnation, from 1929 to 1936.

“Improving the standard of living and reducing poverty require both job creation, which means allowing and encouraging economic growth and minimizing the regulations that make necessities more expensive, especially housing,” he said.

Recent college graduates like Becky Hollar of Saugerties can certainly relate.

The 2012 Liberty University graduate holds a bachelor’s degree in English, but for the past couple of years, she’s been employed at Bath and Body Works at the Hudson Valley Mall, starting as an associate and working her way up to managerial level.

She’s not alone, according to a recent report by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which noted that a full 44 percent of recent college graduates were underemployed, with many of them working in low-paying service jobs.

Hollar, 24, recently left her retail position to take a job as a receptionist at a doctor’s office and hopes to one day pursue an online master’s degree in library science.

For the time being, she is living at her parents’ home in Saugerties and hoping to put a dent in her bills.

“My immediate goal now that I’ve got a job that’s going to pay a little bit more is to pay down my student loans and credit card bills,” Hollar said. “In a year, I’ll definitely get serious about it, but now that I found something that will provide more financially, my goal is to get the loans paid.” 

As for Wehmeyer Longstreet, she’s just happy that she has a decent apartment and no longer has to count her pennies at the grocery store. 

“Toward the end, I was thinking, ‘What am I doing? I can move to Texas. I don’t have to live this way.’”

Wehmeyer Longstreet, a self-professed liberal, said she considers herself a Texas success story and living in the state that led the nation’s private-sector job growth in April has opened her eyes to the opportunities outside of New York.

“What I notice living here is that Texas is a lot more open to businesses. People go out and spend their money because they can, and there’s a lot of new money and they’re investing in startups. It really is different from upstate (New York).”

Still, if she could have made it happen in Kingston, Wehmeyer said she would never have left.

“I miss it every day. Uptown was so gorgeous, and I miss just walking down the street and having people say hello to me, but I don’t miss the poverty. I was spiraling into poverty, and if it wasn’t for my friends, I would be God knows where.”

© 2014 Kingston Daily Freeman