USPS Under Threat and the Impact on Rural with Elena Patel and Sarah Anderson

Season #10 March 26, 2026

In part one of this episode, USPS Under Threat and the Impact on Rural America, Elena Patel, Co-Director of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, joins Michelle to break down the growing financial crisis facing the United States Postal Service. Elena shares insights from her recent research on the USPS funding model, explaining how the shift from letter mail to digital communication has disrupted a system that once sustained universal service. The conversation explores the Postal Service’s Universal Service Obligation and what it means to deliver affordable mail service to every address in the country, six days a week. They discuss the structural challenges USPS faces, including rising operational costs, limited borrowing authority, and increasing competition in package delivery. Elena also outlines potential policy solutions, emphasizing the critical role Congress must play in modernizing funding mechanisms to reflect today’s digital economy. The conversation highlights the broader implications for rural communities, small businesses, and essential services that rely on a stable and accessible postal system.

In part two of this episode, Sarah Anderson, Global Economy Director at the Institute for Policy Studies, joins Michelle to explore the deeper community impact of the Postal Service, particularly in rural America. The conversation examines how USPS functions as more than a delivery system, serving as a vital economic and social lifeline for rural residents. Sarah discusses the potential consequences of privatization, including increased costs, reduced service, and the possible closure of rural post offices. They also highlight the essential role USPS plays in delivering prescription medications, supporting small businesses, and ensuring access to vote-by-mail, especially in areas with limited polling locations. The discussion addresses workforce impacts, noting the importance of postal jobs as stable, middle-class employment in rural communities. Looking ahead, Sarah shares ideas for strengthening the Postal Service through expanded services, such as financial offerings and community-based programs, while reinforcing the importance of preserving USPS as a public good that serves all Americans.

Episode Transcript

79. USPS Under Threat and the Impact on Rural Interview with Elena Patel and Sarah Anderson.
Michelle Rathman: Hello, one and all, and welcome back to a brand-new episode of The Rural Impact. I'm Michelle Rathman, and you are joining us for another conversation that works hard to connect those dots between policy and rural everything and rural quality of life. So, I'm just gonna ask you a question. How many of you out there really appreciate reaching into your mailbox and pulling out a card or a letter? And sometimes you get bills still by mail and so forth.
Now, imagine in any place in America, let alone rural America, where that service was no longer available. Well, this particular episode is focused exactly on the United States Postal Service and the very near threats, urgent threats that this service, vital service for rural America is facing.
So, joining me today for this conversation are two really fantastic experts. One is Elena Patel, Co-Director at Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, and we have a really important conversation about a hearing that happened just this week.
And so, I'm going to say that to remind you that we are recording on March 20th. And by the time this drops, some things might have changed, likely will have changed. So just keep that in mind, and we will update you once we have that information.
So, after I'm joined by Elena, I also welcome Sarah Anderson. And Sarah is the Program Director at the Institute for Policy Studies, and we have a really in-depth conversation about what the post service really means to rural America, much more than what's on the surface, like delivering letters. Really, they are community hubs, and her research is really going to dive into that for us as well. So, we've got another jam-packed episode for you, and I invite you to stay with us and listen to these conversations because it's that time where I tell you to sit back, tune out all that background noise.
We know it's gonna be there when our time together is done. And listen to my conversations with Elena Patel and Sarah Anderson. I woke up ready today. I hope you did too. So, let's go.
Michelle Rathman: Well, as I promised everyone, I am so glad to be joined by Elena Patel, Co-Director at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. to the Rural Impact we are, and I mean it when I say it, so grateful to have you join us for what is shaping up to be a pretty dicey situation for the United States Postal Service.
Who knew we'd be here in the year 2026?
Elena Patel: It does seem, it's nice to talk to you. It does seem what's old is new again, because I think we've heard these headlines a lot throughout the years, but there's something different going on right now and I'm really glad to be able to.
Michelle Rathman: Yeah, for sure. This week we are recording on the 20th of March, so that everybody knows kind of the timestamp here. And, later in this episode, we are gonna be hearing from Sarah Anderson. Sarah Anderson is a Program Director at the Institute for Policy Studies, and she talked to us about the countless benefits, that the US Post Office brings to rural communities.
But that can only happen if the funding continues to be available. And
Elena Patel: That's right.
Michelle Rathman: So very timely conversation. You published research this week on, or last week on March 13th titled, 'The US Postal Services Fiscal Crisis When Universal Service Outlives Its Financing Model." Then, on March 17th, again, it just happened, the House Subcommittee on Government operations held a hearing focused on, and this is a quote, "Oversight of the United States Postal Service, where Postmaster General, David Steiner said basically that if USPS demands are not met, the agency will likely shutter by year end." And when I read that, I thought, oh man, I gotta get on the horn with Elena to have this conversation. So, let's start, first of all by just
Elena Patel: Yeah.
Michelle Rathman: diving into your key takeaways, and then we'll get into much more of the granular detail.
Elena Patel: Yeah, that's great. No, I appreciate the opportunity to talk about this. The key takeaway of that paper was trying to help everybody understand exactly what postal operations look like from a financial standpoint, to see sort of where they're coming short, and to understand trends that I think are much bigger than the postal service.
It's actually something postal operators around the globe are trying to confront and have been trying to confront, you know, since 2008, as we made our steady and wonderful march toward digital communications.
That really upended the historical financing model for postal operators around the globe, and USPS is the second-largest postal operator in terms of geography, certainly the largest operator in terms of global mail flow. And so, it was just the most directly affected by these diverted mail streams. And I think that matters from the standpoint of the business model because it was set by Congress in 1970 and reaffirmed in 2006, before we ever had this mail divergence coming online. And so now I think it's really time for Congress to come back to the funding model for what is and always has been a public good, for the United States and for Americans to make sure that the funding model matches their mission.
Michelle Rathman: Oh my gosh. I am so glad that you said that because I actually did some reading this morning, in fact, that in 1910 we started the rural free delivery carrier, and you know, so this something as an institution, can't think of one that is as important.
Elena Patel: Yeah.
Michelle Rathman: Relatively speaking, now when we think about how many rural communities truly still do rely on their post office.
Elena Patel: Yes, that's right.
Michelle Rathman: Let's start 'cause I do not assume by any stretch of the imagination that our listeners, all of our listeners, understand what the Universal Service Obligation is.
Elena Patel: Yeah. Yep.
Michelle Rathman: give us a little information
Elena Patel: Yeah, the Universal Service Obligation has been there for as long as the postal service has been around, which means it's more than 250 years old. The post office was established to, the quote is to bind the needs of the nation together, like way back hundreds of years ago.
And so, the Universal Service Obligation is something that is a mandate of the United States Postal Service. Again, something that all state postal operators really confront, which is to make sure all of their citizens have access to postal services at affordable rates. And so, in the United States, that means the postal service has to deliver to every address. They have to do this in a way; right now it's actually codified in law six days per week.
And they have to do this at affordable rates, and that's all part of their mission to make sure we all stay connected, which I think is as important in 2026 as it was in 1800, to be honest with you.
Michelle Rathman: You know, and, what I read in terms of what Mr. Steiner is proposing is that he plans to advocate for higher. So affordable is subjective. So, higher stamp prices, increased borrowing capacity,
Elena Patel: That's right.
Michelle Rathman: various cost cutting measures, like reduced delivery days,
Elena Patel: Right.
Michelle Rathman: and consolidating locations. I would imagine that means that legislation will have to change in order to accomplish some of those things.
Elena Patel: That's right. Yeah. You can't really accomplish those without the work of Congress. And so that's why I think that hearing this week was so important for the Postmaster General to lay out where their constraints are so that Congress can come to the table with the United States Postal Service to say, we need you to continue to provide these services.
And if the model that we set up is not funding that, then they need to bring new funding to the table from the congressional side.
Michelle Rathman: And Elena in this climate I am struggling in my head to figure out we can bring together nonpartisan. I mean it. The postal service has historically been, and on this podcast we cover policy, not politics.
Elena Patel: Yeah.
Michelle Rathman: Unfortunately. It's creeping and creeping more towards a political conversation. So, let's talk a little bit about the operating expenses, exceeding revenue.
Elena Patel: yeah.
Michelle Rathman: I think that's pretty easy for folks to understand,
Elena Patel: Yeah.
Michelle Rathman: But really, is it?
Elena Patel: So really, they are exceeding revenue. So first of all, I think there's a couple of facts that are good to level set for folks. The postal service is an enormous enterprise, and so they're an $80 billion a year operation.
And when you think about what their costs are related to, they're largely labor costs because they are a logistics company, they have to process mail, and they have to deliver it. And that requires a lot of humans. Humans who have very good jobs with the postal service. They've been historically good jobs. They are good jobs. The postal service is a good employer.
It also has the largest fleet of vehicles. It has an enormous retail footprint. So, they have 33,000 postal facilities around the United States. So that's more than Starbucks. That's more than Walmart.
It's an enormous facility. And in like rural and less dense areas, they also are a community center, and so all of those things are important to keep in mind, but if you ask why are they losing money, I think you have to bring the second piece of the puzzle together with the postal service and their historical funding model, which is, competition is potentially very bad for this kind of industry because there are so many fixed costs to maintaining the network.
And so, what we don't want to happen, ever, and if you think about letter mail, so go back to 2020, you know, 2005, before we were sending quite so many emails, there are plenty of companies that might have wanted to deliver letters in cities. 'Cause it's not very costly to deliver letters in cities. Everything is close together. There are mailboxes that are easy to get to. So, if we let other companies deliver letters that takes away profit from the postal service. And the postal service is basically left to service rural routes, which are more expensive to service.
And so, you have to prevent this cherry picking where companies come in, and they deliver only where it is profitable because they don't have to be everywhere, which naturally leaves the postal service to sort of hold the bag, so to speak, with dealing with the universal service obligation.
And so up until the very early two thousands, the fact that the postal service had a protected monopoly was a really important part of their revenue stream. Nobody else was allowed to deliver letters, legally. Only the postal service could do that. And that basically protected a source of revenue that was coming from denser areas to be able to offset the cost that we require them to incur, to deliver mail to more rural areas.
Now, on the other side, competition we generally think of as a good thing, but here again, what we're trying to prevent and protect is the revenue base that's coming from more profitable areas to be able to offset the costs of delivering to less profitable areas.
Where they don't have a monopoly and they never have had a monopoly is parcels, and packages. And packages have not been such an important part of our sort of logistics network until the last 15 years. And in the last 15 years, UPS, FedEx, Amazon has stood up a really impressive logistics and delivery network. Again, if you live in rural areas, you probably don't have Amazon drivers coming to your doorstop, because that's not profitable for Amazon.
And so that kind of competition means that the postal service can't count on the same stable revenue base, as their mail mix is shifting more toward packages to be able to sustain the costs that are involved with a nationwide network that delivers to everybody six days a week.
So that's the part of the funding model that's broken, is that we don't protect parcels in a monopoly sense. That is a competitive market. The postal service is the last-mile delivery source for all of those private carriers. Everybody's benefiting from their network, including Amazon, UPS, and FedEx. But we haven't protected their revenue base like we used to when we were a letter-based society.
And so, while they're delivering many more packages, they're not making as much money delivering the packages as they were making delivering letters because we protected that revenue base. So that's this notion that this is a little bit broken now in this economy that we have.
Michelle Rathman: Yeah, and I think, and please correct me if I don't have this accurate. I mean, I think I've been hearing, you know, people describing the postal services kind of a business. And it's not.
Elena Patel: Right.
Michelle Rathman: was not established to
Elena Patel: That's right.
Michelle Rathman: for-profit operating like an Amazon
Elena Patel: right.
Michelle Rathman: and so forth.
And so we have to
Elena Patel: That's right.
Michelle Rathman: right and understanding and shift the mindset
Elena Patel: Yes.
Michelle Rathman: you know, it a priority to fund?
And I, I love that one of the questions that you pose, and I'm gonna ask it to you, is,
Elena Patel: Yeah.
Michelle Rathman: right, given the fact that really this isn't Congress's hands,
Elena Patel: Yes.
Michelle Rathman: decide what to allocate when, how much, for how long and whatnot. What can Congress change, and what operational adjustments cannot be fixed?
Elena Patel: Right.
Michelle Rathman: With that, I'll ask you what operational changes alone can't
Elena Patel: Yeah, So I just wanna really double down on what you said. The postal service is more like roads and bridges than it is a business, right? It's there to connect everybody, and it's there to connect everybody through mail. And again, in less dense and rural areas, especially in places where banks are starting to close down, retail is shrinking back because consumers have access to e-commerce.
They only have access to key e-commerce sites to the extent things can be delivered to their homes. And for people who run businesses out of their homes in small, in rural and less dense areas, they need to be able to get to the postal service as part of our infrastructure to operate their business.
So, with all that in mind, what can Congress do? Some of the report that I put out was trying to look at not, oh, we should put a monopoly on packages, and Amazon shouldn't be able to compete there. There are some things that the postal service, because it's a government entity, incurs as a cost where it really doesn't have the same flexibility as UPS and FedEx.
And one example of that is the retiree costs that the postal service is shouldering. First of all, the postal service has an entirely large retiree base because it is a very large employer. It is the largest employer of veterans, and it's a company that's been around for 250 years. And so, it has a lot of retirees, but the retirees flow through federal retirement systems, and the way that their payments are calculated and the way that their assets are invested to fund those pension obligations, they don't have control over.
They are treated in that regard, just like BEA and Census and these other federal agencies, but they're not funding those retirement costs the same way that other agencies are funding them. Which is other agencies, they don't pay those costs. The treasury pays those costs. And so, USPS essentially is shouldering these costs without any flexibility over how to invest their retirement assets and how they wanna pre-fund and maintain these accounts.
And so that's one of the things that the Postmaster General raised is we need more flexibility to be able to handle these costs. Or if you want our retirees to be treated like other federal employees, you, the federal government needs to shoulder some of those costs. And I think that's a reasonable starting point for our conversation of how we can adjust things on the margin to improve their operational viability.
And the second big thing is UPS and FedEx and Amazon, if they need money for borrowing or for capital investment, they go to capital markets. They can issue stocks, they can use capital markets to raise funds, and the postal service cannot. They can borrow at from the Department of Treasury at most $15 billion, which I admit sounds like a lot of money.
But again, it's an $80 billion a year operation, and they're at their borrowing cap. So they have no capital right now. So, if we want them to make investments in facilities, vehicles, and human capital, they don't have the excess cash flow to do that. And so, the warnings about we'll have to shutter in 12 months if you don't do something are precisely because they have no borrowing capacity.
They're not allowed to go out to market. They have to go to the Treasury Department. And that cap, by the way, was set in 1992 and hasn't been adjusted since then.
Michelle Rathman: Makes no sense to me.
Elena Patel: That's right.
Michelle Rathman: It just doesn't. So, I mean, gosh, I have so many other questions in my head. Before we take a break, you conclude with an essential question and
Elena Patel: Yeah,
Michelle Rathman: Which is whether not universal service has value. Oh, you say whether universal service has value, that's not the question,
Elena Patel: that's right.
Michelle Rathman: whether Congress will finance that value explicitly in a digital economy where the old cross-subsidy no longer suffices. Any hunch with the answer to
Elena Patel: You know what I will say, I actually do think that in a world where things are very polarized in DC, if you listen to that hearing, and I've testified before this committee before, it's the most bipartisan congressional environment I've ever been in. Everybody up on that DAAs. They want the postal service to succeed.
And so while I'm not in the habit of betting that Congress can get something done right now, just 'cause everything in Washington is a little bit stalled, in this particular lane. I do think there is a real bipartisan recognition that something needs to be fixed and a willingness to work across the aisle to find solutions.
So, I'm a little bit less pessimistic because of that.
Michelle Rathman: Yeah, and as we talked before we came online, I mean there are a lot of other issues facing,
Elena Patel: right.
Michelle Rathman: things like, vote by mail and
Elena Patel: Yep.
Michelle Rathman: so forth. And so, before we take a break, I mean, at this time I think it's important to note that as you said earlier, and I'm glad that you brought it up, the US is not alone in this.
Elena Patel: Yes,
Michelle Rathman: postal systems worldwide
Elena Patel: that's right.
Michelle Rathman: are facing the same financial pressures, which you also wrote about as well. What are a few of the similarities and are you seeing any trends emerge from other countries that we could glean some insight from?
Elena Patel: I will tell you that the reason why I've been writing, I think so loudly in this space, is 'cause the trends in other countries worry me. And so, there are places where there is no longer a guarantee that letter mail will be delivered to your home. And again, those of us who live in cities, that might seem like, that's no big deal.
My mail is mostly junk anyway. And I think of that as like a you're lucky to live in a dense area and don't have to rely on the mail as somebody who lives in a little bit less dense area or somebody without clear access to broadband, who's relying on the postal service to deliver parts for their business.
Those kinds of things are basically ignoring the fact that parts of the country don't operate like dense cities, and they need access to different infrastructure, which is what the postal service is supposed to be able to do.
And so, when you compare us to, like a small European country that might be saying we won't deliver first class letter mail anymore. The scope of that cost that would be imposed on so many Americans in this country who don't live in cities is enormous, and I think it is unacceptable to say, to think of that as a potential solution to the problem.
It's really orthogonal or the exact opposite of what the USO is supposed to do.
Michelle Rathman: Right. And so, I like to end every conversation with a question about, you know, how, how can our listeners advocate what, you know, what is the message that needs to be sent? You know, first of all, I'm gonna say write some letters, send some cards.
Elena Patel: Yes. Yes.
Michelle Rathman: that, helps.
Elena Patel: Yep.
Michelle Rathman: What can we, I mean, people should be picking up the phone and calling their
Elena Patel: Yeah.
Michelle Rathman: congressman, saying, you know, why it's important. Any other recommendations that we need to be taking to heart?
Elena Patel: I really think that the more Congress knows about what services the postal service is providing that aren't replaceable, the better. And so that's what my other work is related to.
The postal service is part of our healthcare infrastructure. People who have prescription drugs delivered to them by mail, either because there isn't a pharmacy close by, or they have mobility issues, it's the postal service that's closing that gap.
It supports our rural, small businesses. They need access to logistics. And the only place often that one can do this in rural areas is the postal service. There isn't a UPS or a FedEx close by where you can do this. And so, the more tangible anecdotes I think Congress has about these benefits, the better, because that's the mismatch.
There's a whole bunch of benefits provided by the postal service right now, and we've been free riding off of letter mail kind of funding that, and it doesn't anymore, but that doesn't devalue what the postal service is doing. We just need to fund it in a different way.
Michelle Rathman: Yeah. Well, that is the next part of this dot Connecting Conversation. Elena, I am so pleased that you came here today to join us. You are welcome to come back and discuss developments in your research.
Elena Patel: Thank you. That was a great conversation.
Michelle Rathman: Thank you so much. All right, so as I said, don't go anywhere. We will be right back with another part of this really important conversation about the future of the United States Postal Service. We'll be right back.
Michelle Rathman: We are back for another conversation, and as I promised, I am joined by Sarah Anderson, Program Director at the Institute for Policy Studies. Sarah, welcome to the Rural Impact. We are so glad you could join us for this important conversation.
Sarah Anderson: Absolutely. It's great to be here.
Michelle Rathman: Okay, so I, as I teed up for our listeners, I have been doing quite a bit of research on just the whole issue around, postal service.
And, you know, one might not automatically think if you didn't before, you might understand it now, how connected postal service is to policy. Like no other issue that I can think of because it's unique value in what it brings to people. So, you've written a lot about this. So first, tell us a little bit about your work and your specific interest in, in, in this topic. I'm curious myself.
Sarah Anderson: Well, I am both the granddaughter and the great-granddaughter of postal workers in, actually, in rural areas. My grandfather actually became the postmaster of North Dakota, so I, we have a proud history of that. And you know when the postal service really started to be criticized, maybe about seven years ago, and there were ideas about maybe selling off the postal service to for-profit corporations.
I decided to start doing research on this and to look at what the stakes are in this debate for people rural areas, but also, looking at issues for, low-income families and others who I think, have a really big stake in protecting our public postal service.
Michelle Rathman: Yeah. Just before we started recording, we talked about the fact that, you know, maybe some of our listeners really don't have any idea about what the sacrifice would be because they work in rural and they have rural interest, but never have had to even think about experiencing, not having a way to get stuff.
And, and it's really something that I think that's one of the goals of this conversation. So, you wrote a few things, but I do wanna mention that back in April of 25, you wrote a piece “Who Would Pay the Biggest Price Per Postal Privatization?” And I just think, I would love to just hear kind of a down and dirty answer to that question. It seems obvious, but maybe not so much.
Sarah Anderson: Well, I think the simplest answer is that people in rural communities would pay the biggest price of privatization, and that is because our existing US Postal Service, it's a service. It is not a for-profit business. It has a Universal Service Obligation to deliver to every address in America six days a week. Sometimes they're even there seven days a week.
And so, the most remote islands off of Maine, Alaska, Mountain Villages, they need to go there. And they get by because they take proceeds from more profitable parts of the business to subsidize these routes that, you know, will never make you a lot of money delivering mail for, you know, a letter for 78 cents to someplace in Alaska.
But they have a mission to serve the public. It's a mission that goes back to 1775 when the postal service was created, and Ben Franklin was the first Postmaster. And the idea was that we needed this to help bind our nation, to bind the people and have them, you know, interact socially, but also to bind our economy and connect rural to urban.
And I would argue that our postal service is still playing that role and it's really worth defending.
Michelle Rathman: I mean, I just think about my weekly trip to my post office and the two gentlemen who work there, and the line is long. And they're so gracious, and to your point, they really, their, their mission is to serve. Let's talk for a moment, because again, this is not the kind of, you know, sexy conversation that rises to the top, which is the Universal Service
Obligation.
Probably you could explain that so much better than I could, just so that folks understand what we're talking about here. This is not your, you know, churn out profit proposition here.
Sarah Anderson: Well, a lot of the for-profit delivery companies like Amazon, UPS and FedEx, they rely on the postal service for what's generally called the last mile of the delivery. The people who actually go down your road and, bring your package or your mail to your door, and the reason for that is they don't make money off of that.
That's the expensive part of this whole system is that those last mile de deliveries going to every address in America. And so, but there are, you know, very profitable parts of the system that for-profit companies would like to get their hands on, and they don't like having to compete also with a public service that has a mission to keep prices affordable.
So, one thing that was a real eye-opener, in the last year, was that a report was leaked that had been done by investment analysts at Wells Fargo, where they basically laid out a whole plan for privatization. You talked about how, package prices would increase by as much as 140%. I would argue that a lot of places just wouldn't get package delivery anymore. You'd have to drive quite a ways to get a package if you're in a very, you know, on, you know, expensive route, a remote area.
And, they also talked about all the real estate that the postal service has and how much money could be made if we sold off a lot of that, and it's the rural post offices that, you know, are so critical to these communities. They're community connection spaces, but many of them are, they're not making a lot of profits. And so, they would probably be first on the chopping block.
So, you know, the, the postal service has faced a lot of financial challenges. You might see that in the headlines these days, but it is so vital to people being able to communicate, especially if you don't have high-speed broadband. People who don't have that are much more likely to be paying their bills and doing other really important correspondence by mail. A lot of people get their medical prescriptions through the postal service. It's the way that most veterans get their, military veterans get their prescriptions. For older people, they tend to rely more on the postal service. So, you know, it's a precarious time for the postal service.
I think that the approach should be to expand services in ways that would meet a lot of modern-day needs. There's, they could be doing more in terms of financial services. We used to have postal banking, and they could look into that. They could be selling licenses for hunting and fishing, and, you know, other things that they could process at the postal service.
They already do passports, but there's other things like that that they could be doing. So, my argument is let's expand the postal service in ways that'll make it even stronger and more valuable, and bring in some new revenue, but there's other people out there who say no, the only way to deal with this situation is to sell this off to for-profit companies.
Michelle Rathman: Yeah, absolutely not thinking with heart whatsoever. And at the end of the day, I love the way you frame in your piece in December of last year, "The Public Postal Service in rRural America." As you've justdone a tick sheet of a few things, delivers countless benefits to rural communities, and that includes jobs.
I don't have it in front of me, but I do know that the National Rural Letter Carriers Association, they did put out an action alert to protect USPS from privatization because that's their livelihood. That's where they get their benefits. I mean, what are we, look, what numbers are we looking at just in terms of the, of the workforce?
Sarah Anderson: Yeah, absolutely. And the other thing is that those jobs are in every community, in this entire country, in their community, supporting jobs, but yeah. Roughly, I think there are over 200,000 postal employees, and they are divided. There's the letter carriers, who, you know, deliver it to your house. There's the people in the post offices, there's the processors.
And a key thing we point out about these jobs, for rural communities, is they are jobs, for the most part that you can, apply for and get even if you, if you don't have more than a high school diploma. You don't need a college degree and you don't, you know, at a time when so many families are struggling with college debts. This is kind of a path to a middle-class job with a pension and benefits.
And we compared the, the average pay for these postal jobs to the five most common occupations in rural areas that don't require a college degree. And in almost every example, we looked at the 15 most rural states and what they were paying in those states. And in almost every case, the typical pay for a postal worker was significantly higher than what you'd find in these other occupations. The other occupations I think were like retail cashiers, stocking warehouse workers and, and truck drivers. And in a couple cases, truck drivers made more, you know, like driving a truck in, in Alaska is a hard job. And, they make a little bit more than the postal workers on average, but in almost every other case the postal jobs were the be better paying jobs, and we weren't even accounting for the fact that they get, you know, good pensions, so they can look forward to a more comfortable life.
Michelle Rathman: And there's something to be said about trust being trusted, you know, rooted in community. And I know that for those who are looking to save money or turn a profit, but if we look at this in such a, you know, if we would from a big picture standpoint, the benefits as you pointed out, are so enormous.
And one thing I do wanna make sure that we talk about, and one of the reasons that motivated me so much to have the team put together this episode, and I hope to do more conversations on the road about this is just vote by mail. We are recording this. I wanna just be full disclosure on the 9th of March and over the weekend, you know, there's a lot of buzz if you will, out there talking about eliminating vote by mail.
And I mean, I work in a lot of states, Sarah, where that is the only way to vote. And rural is I read, I'm gonna see if I can pull up this map. I read up a map. This is from 2022. I don't imagine it's changed much in terms, this is from the office of the Inspector General.
57% of post offices are rural areas. 88% of the landmass area is served by USPS in rural areas. That's a lot of mail-in ballots that could be impacted. If you could talk to us a little bit about what you project.
Sarah Anderson: Yeah. Well, and polling sites in rural areas are much further apart than they are in urban areas, so it, it's more difficult for a lot of people to get to vote in person. Rural communities also skew older in their population, and so there might be reasons why older people have difficulty getting to the polls in, in person.
And so, yeah, our very democracy depends on having a strong, trusted, trustworthy public postal service to deliver all of this election mail, especially in a year like this one, when it's gonna be really tense, on all sides. You don't wanna hand that activity over to a for-profit corporation that doesn't have that level of oversight or regulation.
And that's, and they're not gonna wanna do it 'cause there's not, that, there's not money to be made in taking ballots from remote villages and making sure that they, they get counted. It should be a public service and the postal service is the only entity that could possibly pull that off.
Michelle Rathman: Yeah. And one thing that I'm watching, and maybe you're watching it as well, is that there is policy shift as we're talking. The shift is this, is that it the US Post Office postmark changes that could affect mail-in ballots. So, you could live in a rural community, take it to your local post office, but it wouldn't be postmarked until it got to a distribution center, until it's returned back to your community.
I don't know. I'm no rocket scientist here, but I'm thinking that's gonna cause a tremendous amount of delay.
Sarah Anderson: It's really important for people to know about this because it used to be the practice that they would pick up the mail from post offices twice a day, in the morning, and in the evening. And, that practice is, ending for rural post offices that are more than 50 miles away from one of the big regional processing centers.
So it'll affect rural communities the most. And so it's possible that you would drop your ballot off at a post office or give it to your letter carrier and assume that it's gonna be postmarked on that date. If you're, you know, living in an area where for your vote to be counted, it has to be postmarked, you know, either on election day or, or even before.
But instead, your ballot will sit there overnight and maybe even like over a weekend, and it could jeopardize the validity of people's ballots. So, yeah, that was a change that was made for cost cutting purposes to stop that, those two, two times a day to up, and it's really worrisome in a year like this, I think we should be asking for the postal service to you know restart that policy, at least during the, really the most, you know, intense parts of this election season.
And, just also doing everything possible to make sure that every ballot is counted. In past elections, they have, I think, delivered like 99 million pieces of election mail in 2024 and did a good job. But there has been this change since then of stopping those evening delivery, evening collections.
Michelle Rathman: Yeah, thank you, and that's why we're talking, Sarah. That's exactly why we asked you to come on to talk about it. Before we let you go, I mean, we all wanna see the future of the rural post about the postal service in rural communities. So for our, for our listeners, you know, this podcast is being informed in your advocacy work and to have data, facts, information.
So what would you say, to those who, who, policymakers or those who are appealing to policymakers? 'cause those who are in rural education, medicine, whatever it might be, the post office is essential to their work as well. So, what should be the key takeaway, key messages that we should bend policymakers' ears on, even if they don't wanna hear it or have the capacity right now, that doesn't matter.
Sarah Anderson: I think there, there's a lot of fearmongering about the financial situation at the post office that, oh, you know, with the decline and people sending letters, you know, it's just, it's never gonna recover from that. And I think that's not the right way to look at it. We have, for over 250 years now as a country built up the most phenomenal infrastructure with the biggest delivery fleet, with the most incredible personnel, with the most just incredible infrastructure across the country that is doing a good job, but could do even more benefits for the country, if we expand some of those services.
We could be doing a lot more to have check-in services with rural residents who are who are home bound. They have that in some other countries where for a small fee, a family can sign up to have their letter carrier check in, go through a little, you know, list of questions as a way to help people also stay independent, stay in their homes.
I know a lot of rural people who don't wanna leave the farm, right? We could, as I said before, we could be expanding the kind of financial services we provide. The postal service is a trusted entity, and a lot you know, a lot of predatory financial firms out there that are taking advantage of people.
But you could have ATMs and check cashing and other services like that could bring in new revenue. And these are just a couple of ways that, you know, we could help with stabilize the finances of the postal system in ways that would also really expand the benefits for ordinary Americans.
Michelle Rathman: Wow, you just like a light bulb just went off my head because you said check-in services. We are in the middle of a Rural Health Transformation, tracking transformation series, and one of the kinda key factors is creating regional models. And so I'm just gonna put a bug out there. I mean, let's connect the dots.
We gotta build our capacity and I think what you just shared are excellent ideas.
Sarah Anderson: Alright, well thanks so much.
Michelle Rathman: Sarah, it's great to have you here. You're welcome back. We're gonna keep following your work. We're gonna make sure that everyone can connect to the articles that you write as well on our website. But is there any shout-out where you want people to follow you really quick?
Sarah Anderson: Well, I also co-edit a website called inequality.org and we have a free news weekly newsletter that you can subscribe to on our on our home page of inequality.org, and we see this as an issue of inequality. We don't want the postal service to be turned into a tool to increase profits for people who are already wealthy.
We want it to stay as a service that really benefits everyone in this country.
Michelle Rathman: Yes. I hundred percent agree. Thank you so much. All right, well we have to say goodbye to Sarah. You guys stick around 'cause we are not done with this dot-connecting conversation. We'll be right back after this very brief message.
Michelle Rathman: My thanks to Elena Patel for joining us in the first part of this conversation, as well as Sarah Anderson for the second part. And I just wanna mention to you that after the March 17th congressional hearing, I did reach back out to Sarah for her thoughts on what she heard during that hearing. And this is what she shared with me.
And I wanna remind you, because you're hearing this on a different date than that happened. I'm sure things will have changed, so keep that in mind, and we will keep you up to date. But again, this is what she shared with us, after listening to that congressional hearing.
The new Postmaster General rang the alarm bell loud and clear, in his congressional testimony. He warned that the postal service could run out of money within the year if policymakers don't act quickly. Since 1970, the postal service has not depended on taxpayers for funding, relying instead on revenue from their products and services.
Congress does not control how much the agency can borrow when it's short on cash. The Postmaster General called for them to increase the agency's borrowing authority to give them time to stabilize finances. This is a critical short-term measure, she writes. He also called on Congress to make changes to USPS pension funds that would save billions of dollars a year, which would also be sensible.
Finally, without these and some other changes, he warned USPS could be looking at drastic cost-cutting measures, from closing rural post offices and reducing delivery days to jacking up the cost of stamps. All of this would likely create a vicious cycle of customers leaving USPS and driving revenue down further, which would then degrade services even more, especially for rural residents who need it the most.
So, I thought it was important to share that follow-up from our conversation with you. And there you have it. Today's call to action is to contact your member of Congress, share with them the importance of the United States Postal Service for your rural community and its economy.
And here's something else for you that we didn't cover today, but we are going to cover. If you are someone who relies on vote by mail, you know there is no time to waste to flood Washington with letters. And I've got this vision. Maybe you remember this scene from Miracle on 34th Street, where all those letters were dumped on the judge's bench, to Santa Claus. Well, this might be the moment we need to do that, and you can help the post office by, by buying some stamps and sending out some letters, but seriously letting them know how critically urgent it is to protect voting by mail for many reasons, which by the way, I read in 2024 in the general election, the USPS delivered more than ready for it, 99 million ballots to and from voters as Sarah Anderson also, notes is an option that makes voting much easier for rural residents who live long distances from their polling place.
Again, this will not be the last conversation we have on this policy matter, but please know that we hope that what we've covered today, although not a light subject, has left you a bit more enlightened and inspires you to take a bit of advocacy action on your own.
Before I sign off, a few really quick reminders. First, be sure to rate our podcast anywhere you listen. We sure do appreciate that. And we also really love hearing your comments as well. Send us a note from our website, and speaking of that, when you go to theruralimpact.com, it'll take you less than two seconds to hit that subscribe button.
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So at the end of the day, I also wanna make sure, I think Sarah Garvin and Brea Corsaro for all their hard work and support. I'm Michelle Rathman, until we are again, the next time on a new episode of The Rural Impact, I invite you to take really good care of yourself and to the best of your ability, all those around you. We will see you soon.