Chris Edwards
The US Postal Service (USPS) is losing billions of dollars and has a bleak outlook. One reason why is that young people have gone digital and have little use for letter mail. With the continued relentless decline of letters in the coming years, roughly half of the USPS’s current revenues may disappear.
Demographic data on postal system use is available in the USPS’s “Household Diary Survey.” Younger people use all types of (non-package) mail less than older people, and their use is declining rapidly. Aside from packages, household mail in 2024 consisted of advertising (64 percent), transactions (17 percent), correspondence (15 percent), and other (4 percent).
Table 5.3 from the report shows that younger people receive far less advertising mail than older people.
Figure 4.1 shows that younger people receive and send far less transactions mail than older people. Transactions mail received is 64 percent bills, 21 percent statements, and 15 percent other. Statements are mainly letters from financial institutions.
Let’s look at bills in more detail. Figure 4.9 shows that far fewer younger people pay their bills by mail than older people, although bill payments for everybody are going online.
Table 3.5 shows that younger people receive and send far less correspondence mail than older people. Correspondence mail includes invitations, announcements, greeting cards, insurance and tax-related letters, letters from friends, and other items.
The USPS needs to be restructured. The ancient letter-delivery company will not survive unreformed if younger generations are not communicating with paper. Congress should privatize the USPS to give it the freedom to cut costs and transition to a sustainable business model.