Finance
Skyrocketing Stamp Prices: USPS Hikes Costs in 2024!
Clear Facts
- The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) has announced a price increase for a First-Class Mail Forever stamp from 66 to 68 cents, effective from Jan. 21, 2024.
- The price adjustments are part of USPS’s Delivering for America 10-year plan, aimed at achieving financial stability.
- Other mailing services, including the cost of mailing postcards and international letters, are also set to increase, with package shipping costs expected to rise by nearly 6%.
The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) has announced that the price of stamps will rise again in 2024. A First-Class Mail Forever stamp will increase from 66 to 68 cents, effective from Jan. 21. This price is for single stamps used for letters weighing one ounce or less. The additional-ounce price will remain the same at 24 cents.
The USPS justifies the price increase by citing inflationary pressures on operating expenses. The effects of a previously defective pricing model are still being felt, and these price adjustments are necessary. They aim to provide the Postal Service with much-needed revenue to achieve the financial stability sought by its Delivering for America 10-year plan.
The adjustments, which have been approved by the governors of the Postal Service, raise mailing services product prices by about 2%. This includes the cost of mailing postcards, whether they are sent domestically or internationally. The cost to mail international letters is also set to rise, from $1.50 to $1.55.
Package shipping costs are also expected to increase, with ABC News reporting a nearly 6% rise. This will be the second stamp price hike since the summer, as the USPS raised stamp prices from 63 to 66 cents in July.
Despite initially aiming to break even, the USPS reported a $6.5 billion net loss for fiscal year 2023 in November. However, the USPS assures that previously purchased Forever stamps may still be used following the price increase, hence their name.
In their press release, the postal service maintains their prices are “among the most affordable in the world.”
Clear Thoughts (op-ed)
The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) is once again hiking up the price of stamps, a move justified under the guise of a 10-year plan for financial stability.
The increase from 66 to 68 cents may seem small, but it’s part of a worrying trend.
This is the second increase in just a year, reflecting an organization struggling to stay afloat amid a sea of inefficiencies.
The USPS’s claim that their prices are “among the most affordable in the world” rings hollow when they reported a $6.5 billion net loss for fiscal year 2023.
Rising costs will not lead to better service, only more expensive inefficiency.
The USPS needs a true overhaul, not just a stamp price hike.
Let us know what you think, please share your thoughts in the comments below.
Jim Chin
January 2, 2024 at 6:40 am
Eliminating Saturday deliveries , changing pension payments, closing some offices need to be addressed. Politics is inhibiting effective management.
John
January 2, 2024 at 10:17 am
The USPS has always been wastful. To much fat pay at the top.top of the kine Healthcare.and they will continue to keep it up. Talk is cheap.
William Burke
January 2, 2024 at 2:41 pm
When did it ever not?
William Burke
January 2, 2024 at 2:45 pm
Hard to believe there were once two-a-day deliveries, huh?
Linda Robinson
January 2, 2024 at 7:03 am
If they keep going up they will have no customers to buy their stamps .
Steph
January 2, 2024 at 7:44 am
If politicians kept their grubby hands out of it, the postal service would never have been insolvent. USPS has always operated outside of government control and did well until slimy politicians saw it as a cash cow and began robbing it. Since then the USPS has been raising prices and putting tremendous stress and strain on the system and it’s employees. Remember the time when some workers were lashing out with shootings and other violent outbursts??? Anything the government puts their hands on turns to crap.
William Burke
January 2, 2024 at 2:42 pm
Politics ruins everything.
Lori
January 2, 2024 at 8:01 am
I’m in WV and USPS says they are “streamlining services” to make them more feasible. How is it more “feasible” when I order a package that is coming from say New York or Pennsylvania that goes through New Jersey or Ohio say, then to Virginia or Kentucky from there it goes to West Virginia where it, so you would think, should be delivered to me within 1 or 2 days as our state isn’t that big. That doesn’t happen though, it’s shipped to South Carolina or Michigan where it might go through some or all of these same states again before it’s delivered. That’s not streamlining. What that is, is governmental stupidity. They raise prices and then proceed to waste that money by using more wasted wages, transportation costs, manpower, maintenance costs, and fuel costs. I’ve reported it numerous times, knowing it won’t go any further, and am told the party line of “I’ll pass it on to my Supervisors, Thank you for your input” Then they raise prices to “help make the USPS better” and continue their wasteful spending and rising costs. That’s why people are paying bills and sending mail through the web rather than the postal service.
Ephraim Ponce
January 2, 2024 at 8:12 am
I can understand this. They take so long to deliver anything that they need the money to pay the storage fees. After all, you can’t expect that taking longer and longer to deliver the mail is free, do you?
Christine
January 2, 2024 at 8:27 am
Why do they still hand deliver directly to the front doors of millions of homes instead of having all homes install boxes at the street? The inefficiencies are many. This is just one.
Temper Ropple
January 2, 2024 at 8:27 am
I live out of my Home State, so mailing packages out pretty much is on a monthly schedule. I have watched the costs go up so much, that NOW I mail a Medium Flate Rate Box for the cost of what USE to be a Large Flate Rate box. Needless to say, my mailing list just gets less. I rather put the difference into the box in cash…
Dr. Caligari
January 2, 2024 at 8:40 am
OK, so they raise the rate and then more people use the internet to do bill paying etc. Then they have to raise the rate again and more people find an alternative to the USPS. Isn’t this doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result, hence the definition of insanity!
Ruth
January 2, 2024 at 8:50 am
Amen!
Paul Kesterke
January 2, 2024 at 9:10 am
Require employees to perform all tasks that they refuse to do now. I will only use them when necessary. Use UPS instead.
John
January 2, 2024 at 10:23 am
Ups isn’t any cheaper. They are union. And subject to strikes all the time. Do some research before. Clueless. Fed ex is non-union.
Frick
January 2, 2024 at 9:52 am
They seem to be pricing themselves out of a job. How I would love to see the feds “butt out”. Of everything!
I.R. Wayright
January 2, 2024 at 9:54 am
They don’t sell stamps. They sell chances. I had to argue with the cable company and the electric company that I always send out my bills the day after I get them. I got late notices and kept telling them I sent it in. I went to the cable company local office to complain, showing them my check register with the check number and date I wrote the check. “Let me check,” she says, “Oh, here it just arrived yesterday.” That was about five weeks late. I went to direct pay with the electric company. In past years I have sent checks to three places and they never got the mail. They were supposed to go to the NRA, a local fire company and a Flying magazine renewal. Nope, NADA.
stuman
January 2, 2024 at 10:39 am
I have a friend that works in a major city post office. He stated the gross inefficiencies are beyond belief. So many people come to work and just sit around doing nothing. One case that was mentions that a grrand father, his son and the father’s son all worked at a post office and all three did nothing. Waste must be eliminated. Also, why are post masters given million dollar homes? he entire system must be reorganized. Efficient experts should be hired to review the entire system. Get rid of the dead wood.
Colleen
January 7, 2024 at 11:55 am
Stuman, that would cut 3/4th of the USPS workforce. The post office has got DEI hiring and lazy, shiftless people who do as little as possible to get overpaid and time-off. Covid just proved that. Worker’s used covid over and over again and you’d see them at the local grocery or Walmart. Bad hiring practices. Need new leadership and cost saving policies, not raising stamps price and package pricing.
Janet Forst
January 2, 2024 at 11:56 am
We get mailing cheap. It costs of five dollars over in some countries in Europe. I think each po area has to be gone through and updated. And I agree we really don’t need Saturday delivery. On Christmas day they were still delivering packages.
Around here we can’t get enough help at most places.
I also knew it was going up and went and ordered a bunch already.
EMMA
January 2, 2024 at 2:00 pm
OUR MAIL HAPPENS TO GO TO NEIGHBORS EVEN SO ALL THE INFO IS CORRECT , WHY DO THESE MAIL CARRIERS TALK NONE STOP ON THEIR CELL PHONES??? YES THE POST OFFICE IS GETTING WORSE EVERY YEAR. WHO IS IN CHARGE??? WHO EVER IT IS, NEEDS TO BE REPLACED AND CLEAN HOUSE.
Diane
January 2, 2024 at 3:02 pm
We have nothing but problems with our rural P.O. and forwarding. No one knows anything, they never answer their phone and the subs are unbelievable when it comes to following directions. You have to draw them a picture. So tell me why are we paying more for less service? Our neighbor had to send us mail that was piling up in our box when it was supposed to have been forwarded WEEKS ago.
TonyT
January 2, 2024 at 4:39 pm
At one time the price of a first class stamp was the same price as a newspaper. How much does a newspaper cost now? Newspapers make plenty from their advertisers while the postal service only gets money from stamps.