The U.S. Postal Service raised the price of a first-class Forever stamp to 82 cents on Sunday, the sixth price hike in five years, as the agency bleeds money at a scale that would make a mid-tier pharmaceutical company blush. That's a 34% increase since 2021, when a stamp cost 58 cents. And according to Postmaster General David Steiner, they're not done.
Six Hikes in Five Years, and Counting
CBS News reports that the USPS officially bumped its Forever stamp price from 78 cents to 82 cents on July 12, following an April announcement and a May sign-off from the Postal Regulatory Commission. Domestic postcards are now 65 cents, up from 61. International letters and postcards will run you $1.75, up from $1.70.
To be clear about the trajectory here: in 2021, mailing a letter cost 58 cents. Five years and six price hikes later, it costs 82 cents. That's not gradual creep. That's a sustained sprint toward a dollar stamp that nobody asked for and the agency has basically already announced is coming.
The Postal Regulatory Commission approved the rate hike in May, CBS News notes, but didn't exactly do so with a ringing endorsement. The commission flagged concerns about the postal agency's financial situation, its delivery performance, and the ongoing shrinkage in mail volumes. So the regulatory body that approved the price increase also went on record saying things are not going great. Good to know.
Nine Billion Dollars Lost. Yes, Billion.
Here's the number that puts everything else in context: the USPS posted a $9 billion loss in fiscal year 2025. That is not a typo. Nine billion dollars. In one year.
According to a May analysis by the Postal Regulatory Commission, the agency's operating expenses are rising faster than its revenue. In fiscal 2025, USPS costs rose by $1.8 billion while revenue only increased by $1 billion. You don't need an MBA to see what's wrong with that math. Meanwhile, U.S. mail volume fell 3.7% during the last fiscal year, which means fewer people are using the service even as the service gets more expensive. The commission's report also noted that USPS prices had already risen about 15% between July 2024 and the end of FY 2025 alone.
This is what a structural death spiral looks like in slow motion. Volumes drop, costs stay high, prices go up to compensate, which further discourages people from mailing things, which causes volumes to drop further. Repeat.
The Postmaster General's Vision: 95-Cent Stamps
Postmaster General David Steiner testified before Congress in March and laid out the situation with refreshing, if terrifying, bluntness. CBS News reports that Steiner told a House panel the USPS was at risk of running out of cash within 12 months.
"As you all know, there are only three things that any company can do to improve financial performance: sell more products, raise prices or cut costs," Steiner said in his congressional testimony. He then focused almost entirely on the raising prices part. Specifically, he said first-class stamps should go up to between 90 and 95 cents to stabilize the agency's finances, adding that hitting 95 cents "would largely solve our controllable loss."
So the man in charge of the postal service just told Congress, under oath, that stamps should cost nearly a dollar. And then two months later, they went up again. The math on where this ends is not complicated.
Lawmakers Are Mad, for What That's Worth
Congress has noticed that the mail is both slow and expensive, which is at least a start. CBS News reports that Sen. Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri, announced in June that he was launching an investigation into what he called "ongoing mail service failures plaguing Missouri." Rep. Veronica Escobar, Democrat of Texas, flagged delivery delays in the El Paso area back in November.
Bipartisan agreement that the post office is struggling! Great. What's notably absent from all this congressional hand-wringing is any coherent proposal to actually fix the structural problems driving the losses. Investigations are easy. Funding decisions are hard. Anyone who has watched Congress operate for more than fifteen minutes knows which one they prefer.
Your Old Stamps Are Fine, By the Way
One genuinely useful piece of information buried in all this: if you stocked up on Forever stamps at 58 cents, or 68 cents, or any previous price, they still work. The USPS confirms that Forever stamps are non-denominated specifically so they remain valid regardless of price changes.
The agency's own language is almost poignant about it: "The Forever Stamp always represents the current price of a one ounce First-Class Mail postage." So your old stamps are fine. The postal service itself, somewhat less so.
The Dingo Take
Let's be honest about what's actually happening here. The U.S. Postal Service is a public institution providing a constitutionally grounded service, and it is being slowly strangled by a combination of structural dysfunction, decades of Congressional neglect, and a financial mandate that would make no sense for any institution whose job is to serve the public rather than turn a profit. A $9 billion annual loss is a problem, yes. But the solution to that problem cannot endlessly be "charge people more for a slower, less reliable service" while mail volume drops every year in response.
Postmaster General Steiner's congressional testimony was at least honest. He told lawmakers the agency might run out of cash in a year, said prices need to hit 95 cents, and offered nothing particularly bold on the cost-cutting side. Congress responded with investigations. Nobody passed anything. The Postal Regulatory Commission approved the hike and attached a frowny face to the report. And so here we are: 82 cents for a stamp, a Postmaster General publicly lobbying for 95, and absolutely no indication that anyone in a position to change the trajectory intends to do so.
By the time stamps hit a dollar, and they will, someone in Washington will call for an investigation into how it happened. They will deliver their remarks via a press release sent by email.
