Skip to content

Thursday, Aug. 20, 2020

Has the USPS posted $83 billion in losses since 2006 as mail volumes declined?

Allegra Taylor, Gigafact Foundry
yes

The U.S. Postal Service, structured as a government-run corporation since a 1971 postal reform, last recorded a profit in 2006. Losses from 2006 to the beginning of 2019 totaled $83.1 billion.

The loss is largely due to a decline in the volume of mail during the past two decades. The number of individual pieces of mail sent through its system has declined by 31.4% in the last 20 years. The volume of first-class mail, the post office’s most profitable product, has fallen by almost half since the year 2000. (A first-class stamp has gone up from 37 cents in 2006 to 55 cents now.)

Some of the postal service’s reported financial losses can be attributed to a 2006 law requiring the service to pre-fund retiree health benefits. However, a 2012 report to Congress found that even without those costs, expenses still would have exceeded revenue for 2009, 2010 and 2011.

This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.

Sources

About fact briefs

Fact briefs are bite-sized, well-sourced explanations that offer clear "yes" or "no" answers to questions, confusions, and unsupported claims circulating online. They rely on publicly available data and documents, often from the original source. Fact briefs are written and published by Gigafact contributor publications.

See all fact briefs

Between 2020 and 2022, under close editorial supervision, Gigafact contracted a group of freelance writers and editors to test the concepts for fact briefs and provide inputs to our software development process. We call this effort Gigafact Foundry. Over the course of these two years, Gigafact Foundry writers published over 1500 fact briefs in response to claims they found online. Their important work forms the basis of Gigafact formats and editorial guidelines, and is available to the public on Gigafact.org. Readers should be aware that while there is still a lot of relevant information to be found, not all fact briefs produced by Gigafact Foundry reflect Gigafact's current methods and standards for fact briefs. If you come across any that you feel are out of date and need to be looked at with fresh eyes, don't hesitate to contact us at support@gigafact.org.

Learn More

Latest Fact Briefs

Be a Friend of facts

Help us fund more great fact briefs like this one.