Five Years of Increased Postal Revenues
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Dear Editor,
The improved economy of the last five years has resulted in a resurgent Postal Service. The US Postal Service relies entirely on the sale of postage, products and service and receives no tax dollars whatsoever. The USPS has seen a steady increase in revenue for five years, progressing from $65.2 billion in 2012 to $70.5 billion in fiscal year 2016. USPS operating profit in 2016 was $610 million for a three-year operating profit of $3.2 billion. If the USPS were a private sector domestic company, it would rank 43rd in the 2015 Fortune 500. It ranked 137th in the 2016 Global Fortune 500 list.
Congressional mandates passed in 2006 have forced the USPS to prefund retiree health care benefits for decades into the future. No other company or agency is forced to bear this unnecessary fiscal burden. This imposition creates an illusion of financial losses in the USPS.
Postal success is due mainly to increased parcel volume from booming catalog and internet sales. The USPS now delivers parcels seven days a week. The USPS delivers hundred of millions of ground packages to homes for UPS and FedEx. Volume increased from 3.1 billion parcels in FY 2010 to 4.5 billion parcels in FY 2015. Also, letter revenues have stabilized with the economic recovery.
The USPS has a massive retail network larger than McDonald’s, Starbucks and Wal-Mart combined. The USPS delivers 47% of all mail in the world. It is the core of a $1.4 trillion mailing industry employing more than 7.5 million people. More than 600,000 of those workers were directly employed by the USPS in fiscal year 2015, including more than 493,000 full-time employees. The USPS is the largest civilian employer of veterans and its workforce includes about 18% veterans, more than 113,000 individuals who served in our military.
USPS workers provide trained, secure service. Carriers also provide the Carrier Alert Program that helps to monitor the well being of elderly and disabled customers. They have risked their own lives to save customers who are threatened by fire or other emergency situations. The Letter Carrier Food Drive is held annually on the second Saturday of May (5/13/17) and has collected over 1.4 billion pounds of food for their communities since 1992.
The USPS is a vital economic link in rural communities and provides shipping that would be prohibitively expensive by any other agency. Its services are increasingly available through the internet. Stamps, information about zip codes and postage, package tracking and post office locators are all available at usps.com. There is also a smart phone app, USPS Mobile. The Click-N-Ship service even allows customers to print postage and labels for priority and overnight express mail. More than 53.6 million Click-N-Ship labels were generated in FY 2015.
The USPS is provided for in the U.S. Constitution. It is the most trusted federal agency and should be strengthened and expanded.
Keith Steffen,
National Association of Letter Carriers retiree
