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Stamp Prices Are Going Up (Again) This Weekend
By Pete Grieve MONEY RESEARCH COLLECTIVE
The hike comes after stamp prices were held flat in January, which was the first instance since 2022 that they weren’t raised on a twice-per-year cadence in January and June.
The U.S. Postal Service will increase the price of Forever stamps to 78 cents this weekend.
The Postal Regulatory Commission recently approved 5-cent increases for postcards (56 cents to 61 cents), metered letters (69 cents to 74 cents) and Forever stamps (73 to 78 cents) after announcing the changes in April. Forever stamps remain valid indefinitely and can be used to send mail weighing less than 1 ounce.
Beyond letters, the USPS is also increasing rates for shipping services. In a May news release, the agency said the changes represent an approximately 6.3% increase for Priority Mail service, a 7.1% increase for USPS Ground Advantage and a 7.6% increase for Parcel Select.
All of the changes go into effect Sunday.
For stamps, the increase from the current rate of 73 cents comes after stamp prices were held flat in January, which was the first instance since 2022 that stamp prices were not raised on a twice-per-year cadence in January and July. At the time, former Postmaster General Louis DeJoy said inflation projections were down, allowing the agency to slow the rise in stamp prices.
But the U.S. Postal Service now has new leadership under the Trump administration, and reports indicate there’s a growing preference among officials to raise prices as the Department of Government Efficiency looks for ways to address deficits. The USPS lost $9.5 billion in 2024, according to its fiscal reporting.
In recent weeks, USPS officials, DOGE staffers and Trump officials discussed price strategy, according to Government Executive, an industry publication. In at least one meeting, officials discussed a possible “exigent” round of price increases outside the established twice-per-year cadence. Those hikes did not materialize, though, and critics reportedly said it wouldn’t make sense to raise prices right before the previously scheduled July price hikes.
In addition to increasing prices, the USPS is also reducing some of its delivery time commitments as it tries to find cost savings. For example, the USPS added a day to service standards for some long-distance items that are over 50 miles from processing centers in an effort to streamline truck schedules. Some of these changes took effect in April, and additional changes were effective July 1.
Acting Postmaster General Doug Tulino said in an April keynote address that the agency is making progress toward improving its financial health thanks to modernization efforts.
“This transformation is about building a Postal Service that is more efficient, more capable and more competitive for the future,” he added.
Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that stamp prices had been raised in January and June in previous years. The correct months are January and July.
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Pete Grieve is a New York-based reporter who covers personal finance news. At Money, Pete covers trending stories that affect Americans’ wallets on topics including car buying, insurance, housing, credit cards, retirement and taxes. He studied political science and photography at the University of Chicago, where he was editor-in-chief of The Chicago Maroon. Pete began his career as a professional journalist in 2019. Prior to joining Money, he was a health reporter for Spectrum News in Ohio, where he wrote digital stories and appeared on TV to provide coverage to a statewide audience. He has also written for the San Francisco Chronicle, the Chicago Sun-Times and CNN Politics. Pete received extensive journalism training through Report for America, a nonprofit organization that places reporters in newsrooms to cover underreported issues and communities, and he attended the annual Investigative Reporters and Editors conference in 2021. Pete has discussed his reporting in interviews with outlets including the Columbia Journalism Review and WBEZ (Chicago's NPR station). He’s been a panelist at the Chicago Headline Club’s FOIA Fest and he received the Institute on Political Journalism’s $2,500 Award for Excellence in Collegiate Reporting in 2017. An essay he wrote for Grey City magazine was published in a 2020 book, Remembering J. Z. Smith: A Career and its Consequence.