August CPI Announced - Indication of Rates for Early 2019

Postal Service leaders have publicly stated that they are preparing a CPI-based rate increase for January 2019, based on August CPI. An August CPI of 2.419% has now been released. With two board members in place, we expect the Postal Service to move forward with the CPI-based rate filing. Most mailers are planning on an increase of 2 – 3% in January or February with an additional increase later in the year of 2 – 3% in anticipation that the PRC will move forward with a variation of their original 10-Year Rate Review findings. It is unknown at this time if the USPS will include promotion programs for 2019 in their filing. Actual rates do vary. For example, expect drop-shipped Marketing Mail letters to go up much more than inflation for the third consecutive year. This is due to the USPS finding that it has been overly generous in passing through its cost-savings to the mailers who do the work-sharing.