On April 6th, the U.S. Postal Service announced it would hike Periodicals postage rates an average of 8.5% for Periodicals on July 10, 2022, disappointing publishers who expected passage of the Postal Service Reform Act to moderate the price increases.
Postmaster General Louis DeJoy this week said the price increases from the USPS Board of Governors would use the full measure of price increase available from the Postal Regulatory Commission. He said the reason for the big increases was USPS’ continued need for cash to update its vehicle fleet, prepare networks for more packages and make up for losses in earlier years.
“Our industry that worked for more than a decade to help USPS have received very bad news this week,” NNA Chair Brett Wesner, president of Wesner Publications, Cordell, Oklahoma, said. “It is hard to find good news in a pricing release like this, but there are some small bright spots. One is that USPS is finally recognizing the value of our use of flats trays for newspaper containers by passing along a 3.7% increase instead of the nearly 11% for mailing sacks. Increases are never welcomed, but recognition that we are doing a lot to be more efficient is some small relief.”
Ironically, the price increase was announced on the day President Biden was to sign the Postal Service Reform Act of 2022, which took more than $50 billion of debt off the USPS balance sheet.
Wesner announced NNA has requested a major change in how newspaper mail is handled in mail processing, which he hopes will be reflected in the planned USPS January 2023 price increases.