The U.S. Postal Service is seeing delays of regular mail tick up consistently as the agency enters its busiest time of the year, with on-time performance slumping to its lowest level in more than two years.
USPS delivered 87.7% of First-Class mail on time in the week ending Nov. 17, the most recent data available, matching its rate for the first quarter of fiscal 2024 to that date. That marks a decline from 91% in the previous quarter and 92.5% in the same period last fiscal year.
On-time performance has reached its lowest rate since the summer of 2021, when postal management cited pandemic-related employee absenteeism and “street crime” for the significant delays. That followed delays so significant during the 2020 holiday season that eventually forced Postmaster General Louis DeJoy to concede his agency “missed our service standards by far and disappointed the nation.”