When people think of the Postal Service, people think of, well, letters, magazines, catalogs, and parcels. Over the past decade, the Postal Service has handled more and more parcels, but the volume of the remaining products, often called traditional mail, has declined.

The spread of smartphones and the growth of social media have spurred new methods of communicating, getting information, paying bills, and advertising. Despite these changes, traditional mail products remain a significant source of revenue for the Postal Service. For instance, First-Class Mail and Marketing Mail together brought in almost half the Postal Service’s revenue in 2021. Even more important, several OIG reports have found many Americans — including millennials and Generation Z — like and value the mail. For example, did you know 89 percent of Gen Z reported that receiving letters and cards makes them feel special?

For more on this topic, take a look at our recently published web page Focus On…The Value of Mail. This is the second topic in our new “Focus On…” series, which synthesizes our work on a particular subject or body of work in one place. Each page also provides links to the relevant reports we have done related to each topic. See all our “Focus On…” pages. 

What do you think of our new “Focus On…” web pages?