United States Postal Service

The United States Postal Service (USPS), also known as the Post Office, U.S. Mail, or Postal Service, is an independent agency of the executive branch of the United States federal government responsible for providing postal service in the U.S., including its insular areas and associated states. It is one of the few government agencies explicitly authorized by the Constitution of the United States. The USPS, as of 2021, has 516,636 career employees and 136,531 non-career employees. The USPS has a monopoly on traditional letter delivery within the U.S. and operates under a universal service obligation (USO), both of which are defined across a broad set of legal mandates, which obligate it to provide uniform price and quality across the entirety of its service area. The Post Office has exclusive access to letter boxes marked "U.S. Mail" and personal letterboxes in the U.S., but has to compete against private package delivery services, such as United Parcel Service, FedEx, and DHL. The USPS was founded by the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia in 1775, at the beginning of the American Revolution. Benjamin Franklin was appointed the first postmaster general; he also served a similar position for the American colonies. The Post Office Department was created in 1792 with the passage of the Postal Service Act. The appointment of local postmasters was a major venue for delivering patronage jobs to the party that controlled the White House. Newspaper editors often were named. It was elevated to a cabinet-level department in 1872, and was transformed by the Postal Reorganization Act of 1970 into the U.S. Postal Service as an independent agency. Since the early 1980s, many direct tax subsidies to the USPS (with the exception of subsidies for costs associated with disabled and overseas voters) have been reduced or eliminated. On March 18, 1970, postal workers in New York City—upset over low wages and poor working conditions, and emboldened by the Civil Rights Movement—organized a strike.