Saving the post office

The U.S. Postal Service is facing mounting losses and growing calls for privatization. Can it survive?

A parcel-sorting machine in Melville, N.Y.
“The postal service is under attack”
(Image credit: Getty Images)

What’s wrong with the USPS?

It has been bleeding red ink for decades. The U.S. Postal Service delivered 112 billion pieces of mail in fiscal year 2024 and collected $79.5 billion in revenue—up nearly 2 percent from 2023, thanks in part to two stamp-price hikes. But despite that revenue rise, the world’s largest postal service still had a $9.5 billion annual net loss, after losing $6.5 billion on $78.2 billion in revenue in fiscal 2023. Just days before announcing his immediate resignation this week, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy announced plans to reduce costs by eliminating 10,000 jobs through a voluntary retirement program and inviting Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency to help the agency identify “further efficiencies.” Those reforms came on top of DeJoy’s existing 10-year “Delivering for America” plan, under which mail processing operations are being moved from hundreds of towns and cities to 60 regional “mega-centers,” on-time delivery targets are being lowered, and mail is left each night at many post offices rather than being collected for processing.

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