{"id":1487,"date":"2009-03-22T03:57:32","date_gmt":"2009-03-22T11:57:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/?p=1487"},"modified":"2009-09-28T19:55:02","modified_gmt":"2009-09-29T03:55:02","slug":"staying-these-couriers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/?p=1487","title":{"rendered":"Staying these Couriers"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"padding: 1em ;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.usps.com\/communications\/newsroom\/2009\/pr09_028.htm\"><q>Postal Service Continues Aggressive Steps to Cut Costs<\/q> from the <abbr title=\"United States Postal Service\">USPS<\/abbr><\/a> <blockquote style=\"font-size: smaller ;\">Today the Postal Service announced it would be closing six of its 80 district offices, eliminating positions across the country and offering another early retirement opportunity.<\/blockquote><\/div> <p>The <abbr title=\"United States Postal Service\">USPS<\/abbr> doesn't have enough business, but <a href=\"http:\/\/www.usps.com\/communications\/newsroom\/2009\/pr09_018.htm\">prices will go up on 11 May<\/a>.  <a href=\"?p=26\">As I said<\/a>, <q>Basically, officials increase the <em>price<\/em> per letter in an attempt to off-set the <em>cost<\/em> per letter which increases as the <em>number<\/em> of letters decreases because of past <em>price<\/em> increases.  It&#8217;s a death-spiral.<\/q>  Added to that now are the effects of the present economic down-turn, but most of the decrease in volume is just a continuation of established trend.<\/p> <blockquote style=\"font-size: smaller ;\"><span style=\"font-style: italic ;\">&#91;&#8230;&#93;<\/span> administrative staff positions at the district level nationwide are being reduced by 15 percent. More than 1,400 mail processing supervisor and management positions at nearly 400 facilities around the country also are being eliminated and nearly 150,000 employees nationwide are being given the opportunity to take an early retirement.<\/blockquote> <p>Normally, a fair share of early retirees would plan on taking other jobs.  In the present economic climate, benefits would have to be higher than otherwise to induce people to take earlier retirement.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Postal Service Continues Aggressive Steps to Cut Costs from the USPS Today the Postal Service announced it would be closing six of its 80 district offices, eliminating positions across the country and offering another early retirement opportunity. The USPS doesn't have enough business, but prices will go up on 11 May. As I said, Basically, [&hellip;]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,36,4],"tags":[64],"class_list":["post-1487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary","category-economics","category-public","tag-usps"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1487","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1487"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1487\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}