In the spirit of peak season for shippers who are unaware, the Governors of the Postal Service have implemented several time-limited rate increases for their competitive domestic shipping products. These increases became effective on October 3, 2021, and will continue until December 26, 2021, at which time they will revert to pre-October 3 pricing.
The reason for the increases, in the USPS’s words:
As shown in the nonpublic annex being filed under seal herewith, the changes we establish should enable each competitive product to cover its attributable costs (39 U.S.C. 3633(a)(2)) and should result in competitive products as a whole complying with 39 U.S.C. 3633(a)(3), which, as implemented by 39 CFR 3035.107(c), requires competitive products collectively to contribute a minimum of 10.0 percent to the Postal Service’s institutional costs. Accordingly, no issue of subsidization of competitive products by market dominant products should arise (39 U.S.C. 3633(a)(1)). We therefore find that the new prices are in accordance with 39 U.S.C. 3632-3633 and 39 CFR 3035.102.
According to The Daily Journal of the United States Government, there are six major services USPS offers that are affected by the implemented rate increases including Priority Mail Express, Priority Mail, Parcel Select, Parcel Return Service, First-Class Package Service, and USPS Retail Ground.
You can follow the link below for more information on each of their services and their affiliated rate increases. The increases by service range from 2% to 12% with the overall increase averaging 7.5%.
You can read the complete rate announcement here.