US Postal Service Will Cut Workforce By 10,000 After Signing Deal With Elon Musk's Doge

IMO - They could cut expenses by at least 1/3 by delivering every other day. Less vehicle expense, less employees and, do I really need that Amazon purchase delivered on Sunday? I can wait an extra day to get my 1000th please come back mail from someplace I cancelled. Additionally my incoming priority mail seldom arrives in two - three days (not guaranteed) anyway.

Sorry that you get little mail of importance wheelman, but some of us do get mail every day, especially businesses. And extra day or two for delivery of a payment can be quite expensive for folks as well when the payment misses the deadline.

I understand the payment argument I guess but how many people still deal with paper instruments. I don't see how an extra day for some people means that the same old six-day schedule has to stay. No matter what is done someone will have an issue with it. Appeasing everyone is how nothing changes.

"Some people need 6 day delivery so we should still do it for everyone" is something you can only get away with when a business doesn't have to make money.

The purpose of the post office is to create jobs.

The last time there was an incentive buy-out to retire was 2011, which included a $20,000 buy over 2-years. It was 2-fold, get those employees, eligible to retire who retained there CSR rights to retire & to reduce the total workforce of eligible workers under FERs {Federal Employee's Retirement System(a replacement to Civil Service)}. I believe there were only 150,000 CSR employees left on the rolls at the time. My office saw 15+ retire on 5/30/2011, (I was one). This was better than the RIF (Reduction in Force) planned as it provided adequate workforce adjustments to avoid layoffs of junior workers & the inevitable retirement of eligible workers in a short overlap time frame. (A buy-out of eligible workers is far more beneficial for planning, adjustment, and continuing service with less stress on the organization as a whole).

I wonder how many lawsuits will occur if they try to demonetize the old stamps. The PO was paid to provide a future service, which they have not yet provided. There was no time limit at the time of purchase, so I am not sure they can arbitrarily decide to do so. Remember that the one time it was done was a genuine crisis with a war about to begin.

For a start, since US stamps now are dated, the USPS could declare that starting with stamps issued in 2026 and beyond, that a stamp's postal validity is 5 years, after which it is no longer valid. Kills the concept of "forever" stamps, though one could argue that forever really meant "1st class for the stamp's life time", and that lifetime would now be reduced to 5 years,

The Forever thing was a dumb idea. Great for consumers but nonsensical when you are already losing money and projecting steeply declining letter mail volume. The face postage is also stupid IMO. I love it since I have thousands of dollars of old stamps but come on man, it makes no sense to treat stamps like gift cards.

USPS 635,000 employees
US Army active duty and reserve: 449,344 (2023)
US Navy active and reserve: 327,934 (2023)
US Army National Guard: 325,066 (2023)
US Air Force active and reserve: 314,648 (2023)
US Marine Corps active and reserve: 172,577 (2023)

Source: MilitaryOneSource.mil

USPS delivered 116 billion pieces of mail in 2023. That's an average of 183,000 pieces of mail delivered in 2023 by each of those 635,000 employees (as if all of them were mail carriers).

That said, they delivered 154 billion pieces of mail in 2015 with just 492,000 career employees. Hmmm.

https://facts.usps.com/table-facts/
https://facts.usps.com/size-and-scope/
https://www.bls.gov/oes/2022/may/oes435052.htm

This has not been the first nor will it be the last employee buyout initiative for the USPS.

I'm pretty close to the last person to defend the post office, but one of the reasons why the employee base has grown despite the drop in number of pieces of mail may be the increase in population. In 2004 there were 112 million households; twenty years later there are 132 million, an increase of 18%. Of course much of that increase may be accounted for by more apartment dwellers rather than single family homes, so a commensurate increase in letter carriers may not have been warranted. A large proportion of the USPS employees not being letter carriers, fewer items requiring less processing work and automation ought to provide some opportunity for workforce reduction. But until more basic issues such as universal service, number of delivery days, union constraints, etc. are addressed, not sure the size of the workforce is going to change substantially.

I wonder how many pieces of mail are "last mile" deliveries for Amazon, UPS, etc.

Although it's a few years old now, this 2020 study by the Pew Research Center enter may be of interest.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-r...in-8-charts/

One of the things it notes as something preventing or impeding continued contraction of the postal labor force is the sheer number of post offices and the difficulty overcoming public and congressional reluctance to see more close. One could imagine a variety of arrangements which would save labor, costs of overhead, etc, if the USPS were at liberty to pursue this more than at present.

Longitudinal employment chart is at https://about.usps.com/who/profile/...ce-1926.htm. Unfortunately it covers full time career workers and does not include theheadcount of part-timers, a number which has gtown in recent years.

I sure wish we could all put our heads together and somehow help the post office survive. Demonetizing stamps would be difficult and probably wouldn't save much money. Fining a way to counter counterfeits might save more. Heck, hey could probably serial number all stamps printed now with microprinting and could detect counterfeits, slap a red label on that envelope and return to sender. Just the rumor alone would be enough to take a bite out of that practice. Maybe I'll start one on a stamp collecting forum somewhere ;)

It is often said that the decline of first class mail is a big factor of the deficit. Work on promoting it. The 20-somethings are now buying digital cameras because they have fuzzy memories of "real photos" they remember as kids. Nostaliga is always going to be big. We still have stamps. They should have fun issuing them while we still have this system in place. Love the fishing lure and waterfall stamps. I used about 100 of them this week.