U.S. Postal Service Proceeds With Request For Postal Rate Change

Thursday, June 3, 2021 at 10:29 AM

The Postal Service has a 10-year plan for achieving financial sustainability and service excellence.

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(Washington, DC) – The U.S. Postal Service is proceeding with a request for postal rate change.

A notice was filed on May 28 with the Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC) requesting price changes to take effect August 29, 2021, that are in accordance with approvals provided by the PRC last year.

The proposed price changes would raise overall market dominant product and service prices by approximately 6.9 percent. First-Class Mail prices would increase by 6.8 percent to offset declining revenue because of First-Class Mail volume decreases.

According to USPS, mail volume has declined by 46 billion pieces over the past 10 years. In that time, the Postal Service has had limited pricing authority to respond to changing market realities.

To achieve financial sustainability and service excellence, the proposed Mailing Services price changes include:

Product	Current Prices	Planned Prices
Letters (1 oz.)	55 cents	58 cents
Letters additional ounce(s)	20 cents	20 cents (unchanged)
Letters (metered 1 oz.)	51 cents	53 cents
Domestic Postcards	36 cents	40 cents
Flats (1 oz.) Outbound International Letters (1 oz.)	$1.00 $1.20	$1.16 $1.30

The Postal Service’s 10-year-plan is designed to reverse a projected $160 billion in operating losses. The plan includes making investments totaling around $40 billion over the next 10 years to modernize and improve infrastructure to become more efficient and service responsive.

The complete Postal Service price filings with prices for all products can be found on the PRC site at https://www.prc.gov/dockets/active/R.