The United States Postal Service—yes, that old, familiar institution that’s been dropping letters in your mailbox since before you were born—is about to undergo some serious changes.
And leading the charge? None other than Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, who just signed a deal with the General Services Administration and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency—yep, DOGE—to slash a whopping 10,000 jobs and trim billions from the USPS budget.
Now, let’s take a step back for a second. The Postal Service has been bleeding money for years. DeJoy himself called it a “broken business model” that can’t survive without “critically necessary and core change.” And let’s be honest—he’s not wrong.
The agency, which rakes in about $78 billion a year, has been struggling just to stay afloat. And with losses nearing $100 billion and projections showing another $200 billion in the hole, something had to give. Enter DOGE, Musk’s efficiency-focused government arm, which is now stepping in to help identify where the agency can tighten things up.
DeJoy isn’t sugarcoating it, either. He laid it all out in a letter to Congress, saying, “Fixing a heavily legislated and overly regulated organization as massive, important, cherished, misunderstood, and debated as the United States Postal Service, with such a broken business model, is even more difficult.” Translation?
USPS is a mess, and cutting through the red tape isn’t going to be easy. Among the biggest issues? Mismanagement of retirement assets, an out-of-control Workers’ Compensation Program, and outdated regulations that keep the agency from operating like a normal business.
But, predictably, not everyone is on board. Representative Gerald Connolly, a Democrat from Virginia, is not happy about the deal, arguing that this is just another step toward privatizing USPS and ultimately lining the pockets of Musk and his team.
“The only thing worse than DeJoy’s ‘Delivering for America’ plan is turning the Postal Service over to Elon Musk and DOGE so they can undermine it, privatize it, and then profit off Americans’ loss,” he said. Strong words. He even went as far as to say that this could have “catastrophic consequences” for Americans—especially those in rural areas who rely on USPS for mail, medication, ballots, and more.
And he’s not alone in his criticism. The National Association of Letter Carriers President Brian L. Renfroe pushed back hard, saying that while USPS does need solutions, privatization is not the answer. “Common-sense solutions are what the Postal Service needs, not privatization efforts that will threaten 640,000 postal employees’ jobs, 7.9 million jobs tied to our work, and the universal service every American relies on daily,” he said.
Let’s talk numbers for a second. USPS currently employs around 640,000 people, but with this new agreement, 10,000 employees are being offered early retirement in the next 30 days. And this isn’t a one-time thing—back in 2021, the agency cut 30,000 jobs.
This latest move is part of a broader plan to slash operating costs by $3.5 billion a year. And here’s where things get even more interesting—former President Donald Trump has been vocal about putting USPS under the Department of Commerce, essentially pulling it under executive branch control.
So what does all of this mean? Are we looking at a Postal Service that’s headed for a full-blown privatization? Or is this the tough medicine the agency needs to survive in the modern era? One thing’s for sure—whether you’re for it, against it, or just trying to make sense of it all, the future of the U.S. Postal Service is about to get very interesting.
