The United States Postal Service has filed a notice with the Postal Regulatory Commission to raise prices across its domestic mailing and package services, with the cost of a Forever stamp jumping from 78 cents to 82 cents starting July 12. The proposed adjustments amount to roughly a 4.8 percent increase on mailing services, another hit to household budgets already stretched by years of inflation.
Metered letters would rise from 74 cents to 78 cents under the filing. Domestic postcards and international mail will also see increases, as The U.S. Sun reported, though the agency has not yet spelled out every line-item change publicly.
The filing marks the latest in what has become a grinding, near-annual ritual: the Postal Service raises the price of sending a letter, promises the hike will help it reach financial stability, and then comes back for more. Americans who still rely on the mail, small businesses, seniors, rural communities, anyone paying a bill the old-fashioned way, absorb the cost each time.
To understand how routine these increases have become, consider the trajectory. A Forever stamp cost 39 cents in 2006. It climbed to 55 cents, then 66, then 68, then 73, then 76, and then to the current 78 cents, as Fox News documented in a recent analysis. At 82 cents, the stamp will have more than doubled in less than two decades.
That trajectory tells a story the Postal Service would rather not dwell on. Mail volume has collapsed. First-class mail fell to its lowest level since 1968, even as the agency kept boosting rates. USPS posted a net loss of $6.5 billion for the twelve months ending September 30, 2023.
The losses are not new. They are structural. And the agency's answer, year after year, is to charge more for a service fewer people use, a strategy that, in any private business, would invite a boardroom revolt.
As Newsmax reported, the July increase to 73 cents alone was the 19th stamp price increase since 2000 and the fifth rate hike in just two years. Kevin Yoder of the advocacy group Keep US Posted told Axios at the time:
"Postal regulators are finally acknowledging that stamp hikes are driving disastrous declines in traditional mail volume."
That warning went unheeded. The new filing pushes the price higher still.
USPS has framed each round of increases as part of its broader effort to stay financially stable. The agency's 10-year restructuring blueprint, called the Delivering for America plan, is the stated justification.
In a press release accompanying an earlier round of hikes, the New York Post noted, USPS said the increases were "needed to provide the Postal Service with much needed revenue to achieve the financial stability sought by its Delivering for America 10-year plan." The agency cited inflationary pressures and "the effects of a previously defective pricing model."
That language, "defective pricing model", is worth pausing on. It is an admission that the Postal Service spent years undercharging for its services relative to costs. The fix, apparently, is to keep raising prices on the customers who remain.
The Postmaster General has previously warned that USPS could run out of money entirely and floated stamp prices as high as 95 cents. That figure once sounded extreme. At the current pace of increases, it no longer does.
The stamp hike is the most visible piece of the filing, but it is not the only one. USPS also plans to align its dimensional weight divisor for Priority Mail Express, Priority Mail, USPS Ground Advantage, and Parcel Select to match industry standards. In plain terms, that means the formula used to calculate shipping costs for bulky packages will change, and for many shippers, the result will be higher bills.
New hazardous-material handling fees will apply to Priority Mail and Priority Mail Express shipments. Mailers who improperly prepare hazardous items using competitive package products will face a separate compliance fee. The exact dollar amounts for those charges have not been disclosed in the filing summary.
The agency will also introduce a new address management tool called Addresses API. The complete price filing is available on the Postal Explorer website.
Beyond stamps and packages, USPS has already layered on an 8 percent shipping surcharge that runs through January 2027. For small e-commerce sellers and independent businesses that depend on USPS as a cheaper alternative to private carriers, the cumulative effect of surcharges and base-rate hikes is significant.
The people most affected by postal price increases are not corporations with negotiated bulk rates. They are individuals and small operators: the grandmother mailing a birthday card, the veteran sending paperwork to the VA, the rural Etsy seller whose margins are already thin.
They are also taxpayers. USPS does not receive direct appropriations for operating expenses, but its massive losses and unfunded liabilities hang over the federal balance sheet. Every time a rate hike fails to close the gap, and the losses keep piling up, the implicit question of a bailout grows louder.
The agency's decision to halt pension payments while simultaneously seeking postage hikes illustrates the depth of the financial hole. Revenue from higher stamps cannot fill a crater dug by decades of mismanagement, congressional mandates, and a business model overtaken by email and digital payments.
Fox News columnist Ted Jenkin put the escalation in blunt terms:
"That's the current price of a forever stamp in America, yes, the same ones that cost 39 cents in 2006."
He also noted that the Postmaster General "has already warned that more price hikes are coming." If history is any guide, that warning will prove accurate.
Several details remain unclear. The filing does not specify every line-item change for postcards and international mail. The amounts of the new hazardous-material fees and the compliance penalty have not been publicly itemized. And the Postal Regulatory Commission has not yet announced whether it will approve the full package or push back on any element.
The broader question, whether endless price increases on a shrinking customer base can ever produce financial stability, remains unanswered too. USPS has been proposing surcharges and rate hikes at a pace that suggests the answer is no, at least not without structural reform that goes far beyond the price of a stamp.
A 4.8 percent hike on mailing services may sound modest in isolation. But stack it on top of five rate increases in the last two years, a doubling of the Forever stamp since 2006, billions in annual losses, and a mail volume at a 56-year low, and the picture is clear. USPS is charging more for less, and asking Americans to keep covering the tab.
At some point, "financial stability" has to mean more than another price increase and another press release. Until it does, every trip to the post office is a reminder that the people running the institution have run out of ideas, except one.