The US Postal Service now may only raise its “market dominant” prices once a year, not two as has been allowed since December 2020, as a result of the Pandemic. The ruling was issued January 13 by the Postal Regulatory Commission. The restriction goes into effect on March 1 and is in effect through September 30, 2030. The USPS had been raising rates each January and July, although it had already said it would not raise rates in January 2026.

In the order, the PRC states that “the Postal Service’s long-term financial problems “cannot be resolved by using pricing authority alone.” USPS ended fiscal 2025 with a $9 billion loss. The PRC does not believe that limiting the postal agency to a single rate increase a year will have a significant effect on its revenue. However, it hopes restricting the frequency of rate changes will encourage increases in operational efficiency and mail volume.

Despite setting higher prices (from 58 cents for a letter in January 2021 to 78 cents at present), the mail agency is seeing deeper net losses each year and is far from breaking even.

“Market dominant” services include first-class and advertising mail. The USPS has no competition there, delivering six days a week to 163 million addresses, but it does have competition on overnight delivery (“Priority Mail Express”), 2-3-day delivery (“Priority Mail”) and package delivery. Those services are not regulated by the PRC and the USPS does not need permission to change those rates.