United States Postal Service

The United States Postal Service (USPS), also known as the Post Office, U.S. Mail, or simply the Postal Service, is an independent agency of the executive branch of the United States federal government responsible for providing postal service in the United States, its insular areas and associated states. It is one of a few government agencies explicitly authorized by the Constitution of the United States. As of March 29, 2024, the USPS has 525,377 career employees and nearly 114,623 pre-career employees.

The USPS has a monopoly on traditional letter delivery within the U.S. and operates under a universal service obligation (USO), both of which are defined across a broad set of legal mandates, which obligate it to provide uniform price and quality across the entirety of its service area. The Post Office has exclusive access to letter boxes marked "U.S. Mail" and personal letterboxes in the U.S., but has to compete against private package delivery services, such as United Parcel Service, FedEx, and DHL.

The first national postal agency in the US, known as the United States Post Office was founded by the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia on July 26, 1775, at the beginning of the American Revolution. Benjamin Franklin was appointed the first postmaster general; he also served a similar position for the American colonies. The Post Office Department was created in 1792 with the passage of the Postal Service Act. It was elevated to a cabinet-level department in 1872, and was transformed by the Postal Reorganization Act of 1970 into the U.S. Postal Service as an independent agency.

The Post Office Department owned and operated the first public telegraph lines in the United States, starting in 1844 from Washington to Baltimore, and eventually extending to New York, Boston, Buffalo, and Philadelphia. In 1847, the telegraph system was privatized, except for a period during World War I, when it was used to accelerate the delivery of letters arriving at night.

Between 1942 and 1945, "V-Mail" (for "Victory Mail") service was available for military mail. Letters were converted into microfilm and reprinted near the destination, to save room on transport vehicles for military cargo.

The United States Information Agency (USIA) helped the Post Office Department, during the Cold War, to redesign stamps to include more patriotic slogans. On March 18, 1970, postal workers in New York City—upset over low wages and poor working conditions, and emboldened by the Civil Rights Movement—organized a strike. The strike initially involved postal workers in only New York City, but it eventually gained support of over 210,000 postal workers across the nation. While the strike ended without any concessions from the federal government, it did ultimately allow for postal worker unions and the government to negotiate a contract which gave the unions most of what they wanted, as well as the signing of the Postal Reorganization Act by President Richard Nixon on August 12, 1970. The act replaced the cabinet-level Post Office Department with a new federal agency, the U.S. Postal Service, and took effect on July 1, 1971.

Among the changes from the Postal Reorganization Act, a key aspect was the requirement for the USPS to be self-financing, which introduced a conflict with its other requirement to provide a nationwide service. The next major legislation affecting the service, the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act, was passed in 2006. This act limited the services that the Postal Service could offer to only those it already provided and also established a requirement for the USPS to save money for the medical benefits of future retirees. The Act set a goal to save $5 billion per year for the first 10 years of a 50-year schedule, however within 6 years the Postal Service began to default on its payments. The Postal Service experienced lower revenues as mail use declined in the 2010s. In 2012, in order to be able to meet obligations for payroll and continuing its operations, the Postal Service defaulted on payments due for retirements benefits in August and again in September that year. In September 2014, it defaulted on the payments for the fourth time, and continued to default into 2017. The Postal Service sought financial reforms from Congress for relief from the funding obligation and debt from the defaults. Legislation was introduced in Congress in 2016 as well as in 2019, aiming to remove the benefits funding obligations, however no new legislation was passed until the 2022 Postal Service Reform Act (PSRA). The PSRA was signed into law in April 2022. It forgave $57 billion in Postal Service debt and released it from the obligation to set aside funds for future retirees' healthcare, as well as adding requirements for delivery timing and reporting on performance metrics, and allowing the Postal Service to offer some non-mail services.

As of 2023, the Postal Service operates 33,641 Post Office and contract locations in the U.S., and delivered a total of 127.3 billion packages and pieces of mail to 164.9 million delivery points in fiscal year 2022.