Starting this Sunday, sending a first-class letter through the U.S. Postal Service will cost you a little more. The agency is bumping up the price of a stamp from 78 cents to 82 cents as it struggles to stay financially afloat.
The 4.8% increase was announced back in April. The USPS has cautioned that it may exhaust its cash reserves as early as next year if something doesn’t change.
Postmaster General David Steiner appeared before Congress last month and painted a stark picture of the agency’s finances. He described the postal service as operating under a broken business model, noting that the agency has accumulated net losses of roughly $120 billion since 2007. He called on lawmakers to step in and help fix its operations.
A big part of the problem is the dramatic decline in first-class mail — the agency’s most profitable product. Mail volume has fallen to levels not seen since the 1960s, largely because so much communication has shifted to digital channels. Despite that drop, the postal service is still required to keep up expensive delivery operations across the entire country.
Steiner suggested there may be room to raise prices even further, saying he believes Americans would be open to paying 90 or even 95 cents per letter. He pointed out that in much of the rest of the world, mailing a letter already costs $2 or more.
