Three New Year’s Resolutions for the Postal Service

Can USPS turn things around in 2026?

Photo by Maxim Potyomkin on Unsplash

As the year draws to a close, it’s natural to reflect on the highs and lows of the past twelve months and think about ways to improve in the coming year. The United States Postal Service (USPS) could certainly stand to partake in this practice. America’s mail carrier lost an astounding $9 billion in fiscal year (FY) 2025, and $9.5 billion in FY 2024. It’s been an eventful year for the USPS, from (seemingly baseless) talk of postal privatization to Postmaster General (PMG) Louis DeJoy stepping down.

As current PMG David Steiner reflects on these goings on and tries to better the beleaguered agency, here are three New Year’s resolutions the USPS should aspire to in 2026:

1. Rein in Fraud and Theft

Recent revelations of widespread fraud in Minnesota has watchdog groups searching for other hotspots of malfeasance across all levels of government. Unfortunately, the USPS enables fraud and theft through poor controls on spending and constant mission creep. In its Fall 2025 Semiannual Report to Congress, the USPS’ Office of the Inspector General reported that physicians were prescribing medically unnecessary compound creams to postal workers, and pharmacies billed taxpayers more than $145 million over three years while engaging in shady deals with prescribing doctors. The illicit gains were then laundered and hidden from the Internal Revenue Service, resulting in a further loss to taxpayers of $24 million.

This.is just the tip of the fiscal iceberg. From defrauding Medicare to credit card theft rings to stealing checks, postal workers are often directly involved in crime. Of course, these are only the cases we know about; undetected postal crime is rampant. The USPS would have a far easier time catching postal criminals if the U.S. Postal Inspection Service (USPIS) stayed focused on its mission. Yet, as previously documented by the Taxpayers Protection Alliance (TPA), the USPIS has repeatedly reached beyond its mandate and gotten involved in cases far removed from stamps, envelopes, and packages. It’s time to end this mission creep and lawlessness in 2026.

2. Rethink the Last Mile

The USPS ended 2025 with a bang by making a U-turn on its last-mile delivery practices.

As part of its longstanding mandate, the USPS delivers directly to 170 million addresses across the country. For a while, it allowed private shippers only limited access to its last-mile network through a few large-scale deals conducted behind closed doors. On December 17, the USPS announced “it will open up entry to its valuable last mile delivery network. Shippers large and small will be able to access the more than 18,000 USPS delivery destination units (DDUs) nationwide via a solicitation process that will begin accepting bids in late January or early February 2026.”

Given that the USPS already reaches every address and is bound by a universal service obligation, it seems reasonable that the agency should play to its strengths and aggressively sell access to its last-mile operations. That’s only true if the cost of hiring and paying the extra workers needed to process all those extra packages is lower than the added revenue that will come from courting shippers’ business. As TPA has repeatedly pointed out, USPS labor costs are exceptionally high.

Given that private shippers and e-commerce companies such as Amazon are building comprehensive delivery networks, it may actually be more cost-efficient for the USPS to pay these companies to deliver mail the last mile to residential and business addresses. The agency already has these arrangements with private deliverers, albeit at a small scale. Doing another U-turn on the last mile could avoid a costly policy pothole in 2026.

3. Focus on Part-Time Hires

This holiday season, the USPS hired only 14,000 seasonal workers—down sharply from around 40,000 temporary workers in previous years. The USPS has claimed it’s developing “a more stable workforce” by converting more than 150,000 postal workers to full-time positions.

Focusing on full-time positions at the expense of non-career (i.e., “pre-career”) hiring is an exceptionally costly strategy for the USPS. A 2021 analysis by the Government Accountability Office estimates that the compensation gap between full-time and pre-career workers is around $25 per hour, though this total shrinks to $8 per hour when comparing similar types of workers with similar experience. Even after controlling for these factors, the USPS saves nearly $2 billion per year by retaining 115,000 non-career workers. Doubling the proportion of pre-career workers would likely double these annual savings, a welcome 2026 improvement to postal finances.

Conclusion

The USPS can turn around its financials with a few simple reforms and changes to its operating practices. Hopefully, 2026 will be the year that America’s mail carrier starts delivering for taxpayers and consumers.