USPS Continues To Post Good Delivery Metrics During Holiday Season Despite Winter Storm Challenges

USPS reported new delivery performance metrics for the week of December 17 to December 23, 2022.

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What you need to know: This being the final week before Christmas, the Postal Service said the average time to deliver a mailpiece or package across its network remained at 2.5 days for the ninth consecutive week, even as mailing and shipping traffic continued to increase.

The latest service performance scores covering the entire quarter from October 1 through December 23 included:

First-Class Mail: 91.6% of First-Class Mail was delivered on time against the USPS service standard, a decrease of 1.6 percentage points over the last quarter. The current data reflects a year-over-year (YoY) increase of 1.8 percentage points compared to the same period during last year’s peak holiday season.

Marketing Mail: 94.0% of Marketing Mail was delivered on time against the USPS service standard, a slight decrease of 0.7 percentage points over the last quarter. The current data reflects a 2.3 percentage points increase (YoY) compared to the same period during last year’s peak holiday season.

Periodicals: 85.1% of Periodicals delivered on time against the USPS service standard, a decrease of 1.7 percentage points over the last quarter. The current data reflects a YoY increase of 3.9 percentage points compared to the same period during last year’s peak holiday season.

USPS delivery was impacted in some local markets due to industry-wide transportation disruptions caused by winter storms in mid-December across the Midwest and the East Coast.

The Postal Service’s preparedness for the holiday season reflects strategic investments and operational precision improvements made as part of the Delivering for America plan over the past two years.

USPS Plan for Holiday Season

What else is important: In November, the organization completed installing 137 new package sorting machines across its network, expanding daily package processing capacity to 60 million.

USPS has installed 249 new processing machines since launching the Delivering for America plan in March 2021, part of its $40 billion investment in the postal network.

Additional holiday hiring initiatives include stabilizing the USPS permanent workforce by converting more than 100,000 workers to full-time roles since the beginning of 2021 (with more than 41,000 part-time workers converted to full-time since January 2022) and successfully hiring an additional 20,000 seasonal employees.

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