Postal Service Under Fire as Delivery Failures Continue to Rise

Delivery failures at the U.S. Postal Service mounted across fiscal year 2025, with First-Class Mail on-time performance dropping to roughly 86 percent from 91 percent in fiscal 2022, according to a Government Accountability Office analysis published in March 2026. The GAO, which has carried USPS on its high-risk list since 2009, called the situation urgent and demanded action on what it described as an unsustainable business model.

The decline came even after USPS moved to lower its own benchmarks. In late 2024, the agency told its regulator it would target just 87 percent of two-day First-Class Mail delivered on time for fiscal 2025, and only 80 percent of the three-to-five-day tier, down sharply from prior goals of 93 percent and above 90 percent, respectively. Those revised figures themselves fell short. The agency had already slowed delivery standards in October 2021, extending service windows for nearly 40 percent of first-class mail.

The damage spread to periodicals. By the postal service's own measurement, approximately 20 percent of newspapers and magazines were delivered late nationally between July and September 2025, up from about 15 percent during the same stretch in 2024. Publishers reported subscribers going three consecutive weeks without receiving an issue, then receiving three copies on a single day.

Financially, the numbers were equally grim. USPS ended fiscal 2025 with a net loss exceeding $9 billion, continuing a streak of annual deficits stretching back nearly two decades. Package volume contracted to approximately 6.8 billion shipments, down from 7.3 billion the prior year, squeezing one of the agency's few growth categories. First-quarter fiscal 2026 results showed a net loss of nearly $1.3 billion for the October-to-December 2025 period, compared with net income of $144 million in the same quarter a year earlier.

The multi-year Delivering for America reform plan, launched in 2021 under then-Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, had projected the agency reaching financial break-even by fiscal 2024. It fell far short of that goal. Postmaster General David Steiner, who succeeded DeJoy, told the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform in March that the constraints facing USPS have no private-sector parallel. "If I'm in the private sector, I've got options," Steiner said. "If I have 71 percent of my routes that are losing money, guess what I can do? Cut routes. We don't have options."

Steiner placed cutting delivery days and closing post offices explicitly on the table, warning that without congressional action, the agency could exhaust its cash reserves by 2027. He noted that at $0.78, the U.S. first-class stamp remains the cheapest in the industrialized world, compared to the equivalent of roughly $3 in France and $2.50 in the United Kingdom.

Congress has before it at least two bills that could partially address USPS's structural finances, but no markup had been scheduled as of late March. The retiree health benefits fund supporting postal workers is separately projected to be depleted by fiscal 2031, adding another deadline to the agency's growing list of financial pressure points.