On Friday last week, the Postal Service shared its FY 2025 performance targets with the Postal Regulatory Commission.
Over the past several years, the Postal Service has had a difficult time meeting these goals, and it has apparently decided that the best way to achieve targets is to lower them. In other words, expect things to get worse before they get any better.
Here’s a table showing the FY2024 and FY2025 targets for First Class Mail, along with the actual on-time scores for FY 2024. (The full list of targets for FY 2025 is on the PRC website here; the FY 2024 targets are here; the on-time scores are here.)
| First-Class Mail Product | FY 2024 Actual (%) | FY2024 Target (%) | FY2025 Target (%) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Single-Piece First-Class Mail Letters and Cards | |||
| Two-Day | 86.90 | 93.00 | 87.00 |
| Three-to-Five Day | 73.20 | 90.28 | 80.00 |
| First Class Flats | |||
| Overnight | 78.60 | 95.00 | 80.00 |
| Two-Day | 81.30 | 93.55 | 80.00 |
| Three-to-Five Day | 73.10 | 92.00 | 80.00 |
| Presort First Class Letters/Postcards | |||
| Overnight | 93.50 | 95.00 | 94.00 |
| Two-Day | 91.50 | 95.00 | 92.00 |
| Three-to-Five Day | 86.80 | 93.00 | 88.00 |
The targets for single-piece First Class Mail in FY 2024 were 93 percent for 2-day and 90 percent for 3-5 day. Historically, that’s typical. But for 2025, the targets will be lowered to 87 percent for 2-day and 80 percent for 3-5-day. These new targets are presumably more realistic than in recent years, and they reflect the fact that during FY 2024, 87 percent of 2-day and about 73 percent of 3-5 day mail was delivered on time (as shown on the USPS service performance dashboard).
The only time that targets have been this low was in FY 2021 when the Postal Service reduced targets mid-year to 87.8 percent for 2-day and 68.6 for 3-5 day. As explained in the FY2020 Annual Report to Congress, the USPS Board of Governors approved lower targets on May 6, 2021, to “account for the ongoing and unprecedented impacts of the COVID-19 global pandemic on the Postal Service.”
The performance targets are the Postal Service’s goals for the percent of the mail delivered on time with respect to service standards. They are not supposedly to be merely aspirational. The PRC is obligated to determine if the Postal Service is in compliance based on whether or not the targets are being achieved.
The Postal Service has been preparing on-time performance targets since 2006 (under PAEA Section 302), but the Postal Service Reform Act of 2022 added a new requirement. According to 39 U.S.C. § 3692(a)(1), the Postal Service’s Board of Governors is now required to establish targets within 60 days of the beginning of the fiscal year, taking into account “prior year performance and expected operational improvement based on known network and operational changes.” The Commission must then “make a written determination” as to “whether any service standards in effect during such year were not met.”
As required by the Reform Act, the FY 2025 targets were published last week. In January, the Commission will begin reviewing service performance for FY 2024. The Commission will find much to criticize. Service performance in FY 2024 was significantly lower than in FY 2023.
Here’s a table comparing the district-by-district performance scores for FY 2023 and FY 2024. (The scores for FY 2023 can be found on the PRC website here, and for FY 2024, here. The table can be sorted by clicking on the arrows in the column headers; to return to original sorting, refresh your browser.)
| FY2023 2-Day | FY2023 3-5-Day | FY2024 2-Day | FY2024 3-5-Day | Change 2-day | Change 3-5 day |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nation | 91.1 | 84.1 | 86.9 | 73.2 | -04.2 | -10.9 |
| Atlantic Area | 91.3 | 85.8 | 87.5 | 75.3 | -03.8 | -10.5 |
| Connecticut | 92.4 | 86.3 | 89.8 | 75.8 | -02.6 | -10.5 |
| De-Pa2 | 90.6 | 87.5 | 87.0 | 76.8 | -03.6 | -10.7 |
| Ma-Ri | 89.6 | 83.6 | 85.3 | 71.0 | -04.3 | -12.6 |
| Maryland | 88.1 | 84.6 | 84.9 | 74.6 | -03.2 | -9.9 |
| Me-Nh-Vt | 92.3 | 85.6 | 90.6 | 76.8 | -01.7 | -8.8 |
| New Jersey | 92.0 | 85.5 | 89.7 | 75.7 | -02.3 | -9.8 |
| New York 1 | 88.3 | 83.9 | 85.0 | 73.5 | -03.3 | -10.4 |
| New York 2 | 90.8 | 86.2 | 88.0 | 78.4 | -02.8 | -7.8 |
| New York 3 | 93.5 | 87.2 | 90.8 | 79.4 | -02.6 | -7.8 |
| North Carolina | 93.5 | 86.2 | 87.1 | 74.1 | -06.4 | -12.1 |
| Pennsylvania 1 | 93.4 | 88.5 | 92.6 | 80.0 | -00.8 | -8.5 |
| Virginia | 88.8 | 83.3 | 75.2 | 68.0 | -13.7 | -15.2 |
| Central Area | 89.9 | 83.1 | 85.0 | 71.4 | -05.0 | -11.7 |
| Ia-Ne-Sd | 90.6 | 81.6 | 89.2 | 72.3 | -01.4 | -9.3 |
| Illinois 1 | 87.1 | 85.1 | 82.6 | 74.3 | -04.6 | -10.8 |
| Illinois 2 | 88.9 | 81.0 | 85.2 | 68.1 | -03.7 | -12.9 |
| Indiana | 89.6 | 83.3 | 85.9 | 67.3 | -03.7 | -16.1 |
| Ks-Mo | 90.4 | 80.5 | 85.9 | 63.7 | -04.5 | -16.8 |
| Ky-Wv | 92.6 | 85.8 | 88.8 | 75.1 | -03.8 | -10.7 |
| Michigan 1 | 90.6 | 85.8 | 87.1 | 77.6 | -03.5 | -8.3 |
| Michigan 2 | 94.1 | 86.8 | 86.9 | 77.0 | -07.2 | -9.8 |
| Mn-Nd | 87.3 | 78.3 | 84.7 | 69.1 | -02.6 | -9.3 |
| Ohio 1 | 89.9 | 84.1 | 83.6 | 73.0 | -06.2 | -11.1 |
| Ohio 2 | 88.6 | 83.9 | 83.1 | 73.7 | -05.4 | -10.2 |
| Wisconsin | 91.2 | 83.2 | 77.8 | 69.0 | -13.4 | -14.2 |
| Southern Area | 91.0 | 82.4 | 85.2 | 69.7 | -05.8 | -12.7 |
| Al-Ms | 91.9 | 81.1 | 81.2 | 61.5 | -10.8 | -19.6 |
| Ar-Ok | 92.3 | 79.5 | 90.4 | 67.1 | -01.9 | -12.4 |
| Florida 1 | 92.0 | 82.1 | 89.3 | 70.4 | -02.7 | -11.7 |
| Florida 2 | 92.5 | 86.4 | 91.4 | 78.1 | -01.1 | -8.4 |
| Florida 3 | 88.4 | 81.4 | 86.9 | 74.6 | -01.5 | -6.8 |
| Georgia | 88.2 | 80.6 | 64.5 | 56.6 | -23.7 | -24.0 |
| Louisiana | 91.8 | 81.2 | 86.8 | 66.3 | -05.0 | -14.9 |
| Puerto Rico | 91.5 | 82.2 | 88.3 | 79.0 | -03.2 | -3.1 |
| South Carolina | 91.8 | 81.8 | 86.7 | 68.9 | -05.1 | -12.8 |
| Tennessee | 89.9 | 79.3 | 87.0 | 64.9 | -02.9 | -14.3 |
| Texas 1 | 89.8 | 86.4 | 88.6 | 78.5 | -01.2 | -8.0 |
| Texas 2 | 90.6 | 79.0 | 84.4 | 67.0 | -06.2 | -12.0 |
| Texas 3 | 92.4 | 83.4 | 91.5 | 74.7 | -00.9 | -8.7 |
| Westpac Area | 92.5 | 85.5 | 90.5 | 77.7 | -01.9 | -7.7 |
| Alaska | 90.5 | 88.5 | 91.5 | 85.2 | 001.0 | -3.3 |
| Az-Nm | 92.8 | 83.7 | 87.4 | 74.0 | -05.4 | -9.7 |
| California 1 | 95.5 | 88.4 | 94.9 | 77.5 | -00.5 | -10.9 |
| California 2 | 93.8 | 87.9 | 93.2 | 78.8 | -00.6 | -9.1 |
| California 3 | 94.5 | 90.3 | 93.7 | 82.9 | -00.9 | -7.3 |
| California 4 | 95.1 | 92.2 | 94.3 | 84.8 | -00.7 | -7.4 |
| California 5 | 91.0 | 88.6 | 91.3 | 81.9 | 000.3 | -6.7 |
| California 6 | 94.5 | 88.8 | 93.7 | 81.6 | -00.8 | -7.2 |
| Co-Wy | 85.6 | 77.6 | 84.8 | 71.1 | -00.9 | -6.4 |
| Hawaii | 93.1 | 85.9 | 94.0 | 84.6 | 000.9 | -1.2 |
| Id-Mt-Or | 91.4 | 83.7 | 83.3 | 76.8 | -08.1 | -6.9 |
| Nv-Ut | 91.2 | 82.5 | 87.5 | 72.4 | -03.7 | -10.1 |
| Washington | 91.6 | 81.7 | 90.9 | 76.4 | -00.7 | -5.2 |
Nationwide, scores for 3-5 day mail were down almost 11 percentage points. Some districts fared much worse. Georgia, which has been plagued by problems since the Atlanta RPDC opened in February 2024, saw 56 percent of its 3-5 day mail delivered on time — a drop of 24 percentage points from FY 2023.
Here’s a chart showing service performance in Georgia for outgoing 2-day single-piece mail since the beginning of calendar year 2024 (The data come from the USPS service performance dashboard).
While scores have improved since bottoming out in March, they are still far from the target and the previous year’s scores.
When the Postal Service downgraded service standards in October 2021 — one of the first initiatives of DeJoy’s Delivering for American plan — it claimed that lower standards, along with shifting mail from sometimes unreliable air transportation to more reliable ground transportation, would enable it to achieve a target of 95 percent for all categories of First Class Mail.
In its advisory opinion on the 2021 changes, the PRC said that “it does not view a service performance target of 95 percent on-time as reliably achievable for all products in the short term.” As it turns out, over the past three years, on-time scores for single-piece First Class mail have consistently failed to reach 95 percent and usually failed to reach even the lower targets set by the Postal Service.
The fact that the Postal Service hasn’t been meeting its own targets has been an issue for the PRC. In its Analysis of the Postal Service’s FY 2023 Annual Performance Report and FY 2024 Performance Plan (July 2, 2024), the PRC observed that the Postal Service had failed to meet its targets yet again. The Commission identified several areas of concern, including lower service performance in those areas where the Postal Service has rolled out its Delivering for America Plan, limited transparency about DFA’s impacts on service performance, and a lack of performance indicators illustrating service performance in rural areas.
The Commission went on to make several recommendations, such as increasing transparency about DFA and pausing DFA initiatives until a comprehensive study of the DFA Plan’s potential impacts on service performance could be conducted. The recommendations did not include lowering the targets in order to make them more achievable.
Sometime early next year, the Postal Service will also downgrade service standards yet again. Under the Regional Transportation Optimization (RTO) initiative, now being reviewed by the PRC for an advisory opinion, post offices more than 50 miles from one of the 59 Regional Processing & Distribution Centers will not get an afternoon collection, which will add a day to delivery standards.
This won’t be the first time that the Postal Service has relaxed service standards while also lowering performance targets. The Postal Service did the same thing in 2021. In reviewing subsequent events, the PRC’s Public Representative observed (July 9, 2024) that a “contemporaneous reduction in service standards and service performance targets [is] an indication that the Postal Service was aware of the risk that this major reduction in service standards would not bring envisioned benefits.”
To put service performance in historical perspective, here’s a chart showing single-piece First Class service performance since 2009. (The data used to make this chart can be found here.)
From 2009 through 2014, the average for 3-5 day mail was about 91 percent on-time. Scores dropped in 2015, when the Postal Service implemented service standard changes, and for the next six years, scores averaged 81 percent. There was a significant drop-off in 2021 due to worker availability during the pandemic. For the three years since service standards were changed in October 2021, scores have averaged 80 percent, and they don’t appear to be heading in the right direction for FY 2025.
Given the trend over the past three years, particularly FY 2024, it’s understandable that the Postal Service would lower its targets in order to achieve them. But it doesn’t bode well for what we’ll see over the next year or two. It will be interesting to see what the PRC has to say about the new targets.
Additional note: Earlier today the PRC’s Public Representative filed a notice adding the targets for FY 2023, 2024, and 2025 to the evidentiary record for the advisory opinion review now underway. The PR may ask questions about the targets at the hearing on Wednesday of this week (Dec. 4) at 10 a.m., which you can watch here.
— Steve Hutkins
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