The United States Postal Service Delivering for America

The Postal Service is a Fundamental Part of Our Nation

For more than 240 years, we have bound the nation together, and today we deliver mail and packages to American homes and businesses six and seven days a week.

We have one of the best last-mile delivery networks in the world, which enables commerce, provides a powerful channel for marketing and communications, and sustains the e-commerce economy.

Our reach is unparalleled - delivering nearly half of global mail volume, and goods and services to more than 160 million addresses across the country, and ninety-nine percent of the population has a Post Office within 10 miles of where they live.

And yet, our organization is in crisis. The Postal Service has recorded $87 billion in financial losses over the last 14 years and failed to meet service standards. Our business and operating models are unsustainable and out of step with the changing needs of the nation and our customers. Years of chronic underinvestment in our infrastructure and network have taken their toll on our performance and workforce.

COVID-19 HAS EXACERBATED OUR PROBLEMS The COVID-19 pandemic and the record volume of packages that resulted from it during our peak holiday season would have been difficult for the Postal Service to absorb under the best of circumstances. But because our long-standing challenges were allowed to persist for too long, the Postal Service’s network was less resilient and less capable of responding to the pandemic’s impacts than would otherwise have been the case.

HASTENED SHIFT IN MAIL/PACKAGE VOLUME While mail was forced into steeper decline by the pandemic, package volume increased dramatically. This shift further stressed an already misaligned and outdated mail network.

EMPLOYEE AVAILABILITY The number of employees quarantined due to their own illness or due to exposure reached 122,913 of our more than 644,000 workforce thus far. This profoundly impacted our service performance especially during the peak holiday season.

TRANSPORTATION The scarcity of airplane and truck capacity, and the industry competition for both of those transportation modes, impacted our ability to deliver throughout 2020 and especially during the peak holiday season.

OUR PATH FORWARD while these problems are extremely serious, we are optimistic about our future.