(NEW YORK) — While we welcome the new year, we’ll also be welcoming an increase in the cost of mailing letters and packages.
Starting Jan. 21, the U.S. Postal Service will increase stamp prices from 66 cents to 68 cents for letters weighing one ounce or less.
Package shipping costs are also slated to increase by nearly six percent, with Priority Mail Express costs going up by 5.9 percent, Priority Mail increasing 5.7 percent, and Ground Advantage going up 5.4 percent.
The price hikes, the fifth increase in two years, are part of the Postal Service’s ten-year ‘Delivering for America’ plan to raise rates and recover from plunging profits – a projected $160 billion loss over the next ten years.
Some of the cost-cutting measures have already translated into slower deliveries, while the increased prices will more significantly affect residents in the non-contiguous states and territories, like Alaska and Hawaii. Those areas will see an increase of more than nine percent, prompting lawmakers like Alaska Sen. Dan Sullivan to ask Postmaster General and USPS CEO Louis DeJoy to reconsider the plan.
“No state, including Alaska, should be punished by our own federal government because of geography,” Sullivan said in part in a statement Tuesday. “These hikes have the potential to severely negatively impact Alaskans – already reeling from inflation – who are more reliant on the USPS for basic goods and services than other Americans.”
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