A U.S. Postal Service office (ap photo)
The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) will not raise prices for market-dominant products, including first-class mail, through the first half of next year.
Postmaster General David Steiner announced the decision on Set. 24 after the USPS Board of Governors accepted his recommendation for a price freeze. As a result, the price of a stamp to mail a one-ounce, single-piece first-class letter will stay unchanged at $0.78 until mid-2026.
“We continually strive to balance our pricing approach both to meet the revenue needs of the Postal Service and to deliver affordable offerings that reflect market conditions,” Steiner said in a press release. “We have, therefore, decided at this time to forgo a price change for first-class mail postage and other market-dominant services until mid-year 2026.”
The Postal Service emphasized the Wednesday’s decision aligns with its broader goals under its 10-year strategic plan, “Delivering for America,” which aims to improve revenue and cut costs while fulfilling its congressionally mandated public service mission.
The agency also highlighted its commitment to keeping products and services affordable, noting that only a handful of countries in the world offer a lower price for a domestic single-piece letter.
The decision comes as USPS continues to struggle with financial problems. In August, it reported a $3.1 billion net loss for the quarter ending June 30, widening from the $2.5 billion loss in the same period last year. First-class mail revenue declined by 1.4 percent, with price increases offsetting the full impact of the volume decline.
Its most recent price hike came in mid-July, raising the cost of a first-class stamp by $0.05, to $0.78. The agency at that time signaled it would raise rates again for all market-dominant products in both January and July of 2026 and 2027.
The Sept. 27 announcement also marks a major policy move under Steiner, who took office in July after his predecessor Louis DeJoy stepped down in March.
DeJoy launched the Delivering for America plan in 2021 in an effort to reform the agency’s business and operating models, which he called “unsustainable and out of step” with the evolving needs of the nation and its customers. While USPS revenues have grown in recent years, rising costs have outpaced them, producing net losses of $950 million in fiscal year 2022, $6.5 billion in fiscal 2023, and $9.5 billion in fiscal 2024.
For customers, stamp prices have climbed steadily since 2021 in six consecutive hikes, rising from $0.58 to $0.78.
Even as customers pay more, USPS has lowered its standards for how much mail it expects to deliver on time. In November 2024, the agency told regulators it aims in fiscal 2025 to deliver 87 percent of two-day first-class mail on time and 80 percent of three- to five-day mail—down from its fiscal 2024 targets of 93 percent and more than 90 percent, respectively.
In February, President Donald Trump called the Postal Service a “tremendous loser for this country,” and said he was considering bringing the Postal Service under the control of the Department of Commerce. The president had also floated the idea of privatizing the Postal Service, although a Treasury Department task force he commissioned in 2018 warned that rural communities would take the hardest hit from doing so.
In December 2024, Trump said at a press conference that he still considered privatization an option, but stopped short of outright endorsing it.
Privatizing the USPS is “not the worst idea I’ve ever heard,” he told reporters. “It’s an idea that a lot of people have liked for a long time. We’re looking at it.”
