On August 6, the Postal Service filed a quarterly report with the Postal Regulatory Commission providing updated information about post offices that are suspended or discontinued (i.e., permanently closed). A post office (or station or branch) can be suspended for a variety of reasons, such as a lost lease or building deficiencies. and remedying those issues (or not) can determine its eventual fate.
Some numbers
As of the end of Fiscal 2025 (September 30, 2025), the USPS had 32,907 post offices, stations, and branches, including 30,972 USPS-operated facilities and 1,935 contracted facilities, such as community post offices, village post offices, and contract postal units – overall, about 1.75% fewer than at the end of FY 2023.
According to the recent report, as of the end of Quarter 3, FY 2026 (June 30), 479 post offices are suspended, including 389 post offices and 90 stations and branches, about 1.5% of the total USPS-operated facilities reported at the end of FY 2025. Of the 479 that are suspended, 61 are listed as “discontinuance pending,” meaning they’re somewhere in the steps required to formally close the facility.
Post offices
Part of the Postal Service’s Universal Service Obligation is to provide nationwide access to postal services – typically interpreted as meaning local retail postal outlets, whether operated by the Postal Service itself or a contractor. Over time, the population of those outlets has fallen continually. Sixty years ago, there were 44,333 post offices, including 36,718 USPS-operated facilities. Closing over 11,400 post offices – 25.8% of the nation’s post offices – albeit gradually – represents a significant decrease in access to postal services, and an arguably equivalent decline in fulfillment of the USO.
Data is not readily available outside the USPS to provide context, i.e., how many customers were impacted and how far they were sent to the nearest available post office, as well as how much revenue the Postal Service earned from the closed post offices vs how much it cost to operate them.
Of the 61 post offices now facing discontinuance, 47 are “remotely managed post offices,” meaning they have an employee or two but no postmaster. The facility is overseen by the postmaster of another nearby post office or by district staff. Regardless, it’s a good bet that the cost to operate the 61 facilities – rent, utilities, and routine maintenance, plus the salaries and benefits for the employees (even if they’re part-time) exceeded the revenue generated by patrons.
Therein lies the USO conundrum: how to continue operating “unprofitable” post offices – which have been estimated to be about a third of the total – and how that cost will be paid. Currently, it’s by the revenue derived from ratepayers – typically the high-volume customers of commercial mail producers who generate the majority of USPS revenue. However, that population (and mail volume) is shrinking, meaning USO costs and postage revenue are moving in opposite directions.
Delivery
Small post offices – like those on the verge of extinction – usually don’t have delivery by a city or rural carrier, so patrons have a free “category E” post office box. Barring the unlikely event that carrier delivery will be available from whatever post office they’re served by when theirs closes, they will continue to have a free PO box, only farther away. The element of the USO interpreted as requiring delivery of mail (in some manner) would still be fulfilled.
However, every year there will be less mail going into those boxes, just as there’ll be less mail going into mailboxes along city and rural routes elsewhere in the US. Despite the loss of mail volume, and the revenue it represents, there are more delivery points every year, and each must be served by a carrier (or, for a PO box, a clerk) earning a salary and benefits. (At the end of FY 2025, there were 170,389,351 delivery points, 30% more than in 1997).
As with the trendlines for post office operating costs and the income they generate, the trendlines for cost per delivery and the revenue derived from the postage for the mail being delivered are diverging as well.
Reckoning
It doesn’t take a math whiz to realize that as cost increases and revenue decreases the negative results worsen over time. Similarly, it doesn’t take an economist to understand that customers will pay just so much for service from a provider before they find another; in the case of the Postal Service, the alternative for messages in electronic media.
There are many rabbit holes to go down in a broad discussion of USPS finances and what can be done to improve its financial condition. People can debate about how the Postal Service’s accounts are or should be invested by the US Treasury, how the agency’s current and future health care and retirement obligations should be covered, whether the USPS should be spending less on facilities, and whether it should be more aggressive in controlling the cost of labor.
What will remain – and what is easier to define – is the USO. The loss from the nation’s post offices that don’t “make a profit” can be defined. Similarly, cost and income per delivery stop are known, and can be used to quantify “unprofitable” delivery routes. In turn, if universal service is to be provided, the losses generated in doing so can be calculated.
The expectation always has been that the Postal Service would be self-sustaining (even if the Post Office Department that preceded it was not). That was reasonable when mail volume was growing and could support an expanding postal system, but no longer; volume is approaching half of what it was twenty years ago.
We can differ with the USPS and the PMG about a lot, but we all can agree on the need to find a way to pay for the USO. Doing it through postage increases on a shrinking mail base that would further depress volume is self-defeating, as is reducing – and devaluing – quality service.
Rather, the USO must be recognized as an unfunded mandate; if it’s an obligation imposed on the USPS that requires service to the public, that public should be contributing to help support its fulfillment. Doing so, obviously, requires Congress to act, and that’s where “if you want it you have to pay for it” falls on deaf ears.