USPS releases preliminary financial results for January
TweetThe Postal Service yesterday confirmed that the decline in mail volumes and revenue accelerated in January. Total mail volume was down 16.3% for the month, compared with an 11.0% drop for the fiscal year to date. The sharpest decline came in Standard Mail, down 22.3% compared with January 2008. First Class mail was down 10.8%.
Because of last May’s rate increase, the 16.3% drop in volume produced a revenue drop of 11.8%. That’s still considerably higher than the 7.8% decline for the fiscal year to date. More worrisome is the fact that total expenses have barely dropped since last year- they were down just 1.1% in January, and year to date. Employee work hours declined by 8% compared with last year, but employee salaries and benefits payments dropped by less than a percentage point. Expenses for City Carrier salaries actually increased 1.5%, while “Other” salaries, which includes maintenance, administrative and support personnel, increased by 3.7%.
The filing also confirms that the USPS year to date operating defecit stood at $1.1 billion at the end of January, with eight months still to come in the 2009 fiscal year.
(The postal service cautions that the data in the reports is unaudited and preliminary. In particular, the statistical methods used for estimating revenue, pieces and weight are designed to be valid on a quarterly rather than monthly basis.)
March 4th, 2009 10:10
Nothing left to say.
March 4th, 2009 12:01
Not good . Not good at all .
March 4th, 2009 18:21
Bad timing during National Mail Count for rural carriers.
March 4th, 2009 19:55
going down, where is the limit?
March 5th, 2009 15:55
Potter deserves a raise. Why not?
March 5th, 2009 19:46
Looking at the responses above, I can hear the same utter frustration that I witness every day at the office. I disagree that there is nothing left to say. The problem is that there is more to say than there is space available on the internet itself!
My career-long contention (38+ years and counting) has always been that the reason the USPS performs, excels, or maintains service records that it has… is directly the result of the day-in, day-out, over and above performance of the majority of the rank and file employees in spite of the most archane and ineffective management policies in industrial history.
I passed on a BA in Bsnss Mgt when I realized early on in my career that every bad form of bsnss mgt. that they cautioned against was in evidence at my own GMF. It hasn’t changed in all these years. What has changed is a tolerant-of-abuse economy that is finally ready to ‘give up the ghost’.
I have worked on virtually every automated innovation introduced… on every shift possible, and experienced life in 7 different carrier units, and spent a decade in retail. The observation I cited above re: employee performance stands unquestionable by my witness. Though I was runner up for employee of the year on 4 different occasions, it was obvious to me that any number of co-workers in each instance were equally worthy of that distinction… and more so. I only offer that to support my belief that there is little wrong with the ‘Goose’ the lays the ‘Golden Egg’.
In the last two days I have witnessed fellow employees… mgt. and rank and file, scream at each other at the top of the voices, spewing profanities… goading each other to ‘cross the line’. It breaks my heart. Micro-managed to death, stress levels are the highest I’ve ever seen… in both camps. I’ve written newspapers, reporting the same behavior in every office I’ve worked in.
Then I get the ‘propaganda sheets’ that show all the photo ops of how great things are… back slapping ignorance or denial of real life in the trenches.
The last service talk of note came from automation at the GMF where I was last spring… the good news? … we were # 1 in overnight delivery… and # 2 in overall customer satisfaction…. the bad news? … without taking a breath… was that , at that time, we were experiencing a $2 billion shortfall in revenue and “as much as we don’t want to… the gloves are going to have to come off”????? I confronted the supervisor afterward to ask whether he found himself conflicted at all by his presentation. … his response? … well, the expression ‘Like a deer in the headlights…” pretty much sums it up. That kind of mindless detachment cannot exist in the absence of micro-mgt.