Despite the Postal Service’s efforts to convince commercial mailers and the public otherwise, the agency’s declining service performance has again been verified.
In a September report entitled Cost-Cutting Initiatives and Other Factors Have Contributed to Declining Service Performance, the US Government Accountability Office provided further evidence that the Postal Service’s misguided pursuit of “efficiency,” a key to former postmaster general Louis DeJoy’s 10-Year Plan, is driving service performance in the wrong direction.
The audit report was addressed to the Subcommittee on Government Operations of the US House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. The GAO explained the impetus for its audit:
- “GAO was asked to review USPS service performance issues. This report examines (1) changes USPS has made to service standards for market-dominant products and to related operations since 2021; (2) how the cost-cutting initiatives in USPS’s strategic plan have affected service performance and customers; and (3) the extent to which USPS’s actions have addressed service performance issues, and how USPS has communicated ongoing and planned actions to Congress and the public.”
One of the reports most significant findings was about the Postal Service’s repeated relaxation of its service targets and its consistent failure to meet them:
- “According to USPS’s 2021 strategic plan, USPS’s goal after the plan’s implementation was to deliver 95 percent of mail on time. However, from fiscal year 2020 to fiscal year 2026, USPS substantially lowered its service performance targets (i.e., the percentage of mail USPS expects to meet service standards). USPS officials said USPS did this in part to address past unrealistic targets and accommodate ongoing network changes. Over this period, USPS reduced the service performance targets for single-piece First-Class Mail from 96.50 percent to 87.00 percent for 2-day mail, and from 95.25 percent to 81.50 percent for 3- to 5-day mail.
- “Despite substantially lowering its service performance targets and lengthening service standards in fiscal year 2021, USPS has not met most of its targets since it started implementing the cost-cutting initiatives in its strategic plan. For example, USPS has not met most of its targets for First-Class Mail since fiscal year 2022, the first full fiscal year of the strategic plan. More broadly, 20 of 27 categories of market dominant products failed to meet service performance targets in fiscal year 2025. According to USPS officials, USPS did not meet many of its service performance targets long before the implementation of the strategic plan, in part due to longstanding structural and operational performance issues.”
The GAO noted some of the tactics the USPS has used to mitigate the measured service decline:
- “Effective October 2021, USPS modified its service standards by adding 1 to 2 days for delivery of certain First-Class Mail, resulting in a delivery window of 1 to 5-days. USPS did so to align mail delivery with its shift from air transportation to mostly ground transportation. Prior to the launch of its strategic plan, USPS relied on an air network to meet its 3-day service standards for moving mail across the country. While the air-to-ground initiative cut USPS’s air transportation expenses, which we discuss later, it also lengthened the expected delivery time for some First-Class Mail. …
- “In April 2025, USPS made further changes to the expected delivery time, which USPS officials characterize as a refinement, for certain First-Class Mail. Specifically, USPS eliminated the end-of-day or afternoon collection at post offices more than 50 miles from a Regional Processing and Distribution Center, as part of its Regional Transportation Optimization and network redesign initiatives. This change reduced mail pickup to once a day for affected post offices. This meant that mail dropped off at an affected post office after the morning collection could have at least 1 day added to the expected delivery time as it would not be collected until the next business day. …
- “In addition, beginning in April 2025, USPS no longer counts Sundays or federal holidays as part of the service standard measurement for mail. USPS officials told us that only mail that entered its network the day before a Sunday or holiday would be affected by this change. For example, mail dropped off on a Saturday afternoon before a federal holiday may stay at the post office for 3 days before USPS begins processing it on Tuesday and the service standard of 1 to 5 days begins. …”
The Postal Service’s official response was predictable and not original – a recitation of its problems and claims that its “modernization is working” – as if the continued financial shortfalls and declining service figures weren’t obvious to anyone who looks. Unfortunately, the USPS industrial engineers fixated on “efficiency” have yet to realize that the agency’s mission is to provide service, and that by doing so it might retain the mail volume necessary to stabilize its finances.