May 24, 2023

Alliance Members:

The U.S. Postal Service just released its financial report for April and seven months of fiscal year 2023. In short, it’s getting worse…much worse. You’ve got to hand it to management to convince the Governors to approve another rate hike in July when they are driving mail away with record rate hikes and getting no increase in revenue.

The Postal Regulatory Commission gave USPS a strong incentive to drive down volume. Under the regulator’s rules, USPS can add to the following year’s rate increase based on the current year’s volume declines. The ratio is roughly 45%. So a 10% drop in mail volume this year which now seems likely would yield another 4.5% rate authority for the mail agency to add onto the Consumer Price Index for July 2024.

April 2023 United States Postal Service Financial Report

* April operating revenue -3.5%

* 7 months of year-to-date operating revenue -1.1%

*April net loss ($641 million)

*YTD net loss ($4.148 billion)

* April Market Dominant mail volume -14.8%

*YTD MD mail volume -8.2%

*April Competitive package volume -3.0%

*YTD Comp package volume -3.6%

* April First-Class Mail volume -9.3%

*April FCM revenue +0.5%

*YTD FCM volume -6.7%

*YTD FCM revenue +0.8%

*April Marketing Mail volume -18.4%

*April MM revenue -11.5%

*YTD MM volume -9.1%

*YTD MM revenue -4.4%

*April Periodicals volume -23.1%

*April Per revenue -13.3%

*YTD Per volume -12.7%

*YTD Per revenue -5.2%

Best, Steve