Mail volume has halved since Postal Service’s 2006 peak

Data Journalist

Data Visualization Journalist

WASHINGTON —

The United States Postal Service marks its 251st anniversary Sunday, but questions loom over its financial viability as fewer people mail letters.

The agency, which delivers mail to the nation’s 170 million addresses, was on track to run out of cash this year.

By deferring payments to worker retirement funds, it bought back some time. Postmaster General David Steiner estimated in a statement to Congress that the service now has until between 2031 and 2035 before it runs out of cash.

The Postal Service has a “broken business model,” Steiner said in that statement, and he called for congressional action to repair it.

Declining mail volume

Since its peak in 2006, total mail volume handled by the Postal Service has halved, according to an analysis of Postal Service data by the Get the Facts Data Team.

The agency is now delivering approximately the same amount of annual mail as it did in the early 1980s.

Letter mail in particular has suffered.

The Postal Service holds a monopoly over letter mail delivery. It’s historically been the agency’s largest revenue bucket, with first-class mail and marketing mail accounting for more than half of its revenue.

With that monopoly, the Postal Service is bound under its universal service obligation to deliver to 170 million addresses six days a week.

While it still fulfills that obligation, the rise in digital communication — emails, texting, phone calls — has driven a more than 57% drop in first-class mail volume over the past two decades.

That decline has been accompanied by a rise in package delivery, but it faces strong competition from companies like UPS, FedEx and Amazon.

“The mix of mail that it carries now doesn’t raise the same amount of money that it used to,” said Elena Patel, a senior fellow in economic studies and co-director of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. “And so, asking the Postal Service to fulfill its universal service obligation is getting harder and harder on its own.”

Two decades ago, about 89% of revenue was generated by market-dominant products, which mostly included letters, cards and marketing mail. For fiscal year 2025, that dropped to 57% as more revenue is being generated by shipping and packages.

The amount of money earned from shipping and packages has nearly quadrupled since 2007. It now accounts for about 40% of revenue.

While being a competitor, Amazon is also the Postal Service’s largest customer. About $6 billion in revenue was made by the Postal Service last year through an agreement with Amazon to deliver packages, according to the Wall Street Journal. However, the volume will be cut by about 20% this fall.

Financial uncertainty

Every year since 2006 — when total mail volume peaked — the Postal Service has spent more than it has earned.

The Postal Service, while around for 251 years, first became an independent agency in 1971 under the Postal Reorganization Act of 1970. The law was enacted under President Richard Nixon’s administration so that the agency could set its own rates and employee salaries.

Since then, the agency — which is a protected monopoly — has largely covered its own costs by selling stamps. But now, the sale of stamps is not enough to make up the difference, even by raising the cost.

“The problem is that the business model hasn’t changed. The underlying economics have changed,” according to Patel.

Because of its status as an independent agency, which protects it from political pressures, the Postal Service does not receive annual appropriations from Congress to fulfill its universal service obligation.

“Most Americans don’t realize that it doesn’t operate with taxpayer dollars. It operates based on the funds that it raises through sales at post offices and through postage stamps,” Chris Pappas, D-N.H., told the data team.

Its status as an independent federal agency also means it’s capped on the amount it can borrow from the government. That cap has been the same — $15 billion — since 1992.

Paths forward for the Postal Service

Last year, a group of lawmakers formed the bipartisan Congressional Postal Service Caucus, which has a mission to improve the service and protect its employees.

“There are those of us on both sides of the aisle that feel strongly that we’ve got to work to maintain the U.S. Postal Service to ensure that it can continue to deliver for our communities and our economy and that it’s put on a stronger footing for the future,” said Pappas, who co-founded the caucus.

The Postal Service employs more than half a million workers. It also provides key infrastructure, particularly for rural areas and vulnerable populations, allowing people to receive bills, obtain medicine, operate small businesses, pay taxes and vote.

“It’s actually like the entire legal backbone of the United States,” Patel said.

In a statement to the Get the Facts Data Team, a spokesperson for the Postal Service said the agency is “currently pursuing a transformation plan aimed at restoring long-term financial sustainability, improving service, and maintaining the organization as one of America’s most valued and trusted brands.”

One of its most recent efforts to get more cash on hand was to begin borrowing from the employee retirement funds. If it did not, it would have been out of cash by the end of the current fiscal year.

There are a few paths forward, experts say, including congressional funding or cuts to service.

Advocates for the Postal Service still agree that its bedrock should be the universal service obligation: delivery six days a week at affordable rates across the country.

“What we don’t want to see is for post offices to be closed, for people to lose their jobs, for service to be dramatically altered,” Pappas said. “We want to maintain the standards and ensure that we have six-day delivery that’s working for our small businesses and our residents, and we can do that by making some smart decisions.”