How Many People Work for USPS?

Ever wondered how many people work for USPS? Currently, the United States Postal Service employs an estimated 497,000 people. That’s a whole lot of manpower working to deliver our country’s mail and parcels! In fact, only a few companies employ more people in their total workforce, including Amazon and Walmart.

This high number of total employees makes sense if you think about the huge volume of mail and parcels that pass through USPS each year. In the fiscal year 2017 alone, USPS delivered 149 billion pieces of mail to 157 million delivery addresses! In addition, more eCommerce businesses choose shipping with USPS over other carriers…and the total number of online sellers is only going to keep growing as the years go on.

The Trend Seems to be Moving Downward

If you take a look at this list of total USPS employees from 1926 to 2017, you’ll notice that the trend of total employees has been steadily decreasing. As seen in the list, 1999 was the peak year for Postal Service employment. That year, USPS employed nearly 798,000 total workers! That number fell in the year 2000 and, with the exception of a couple of years, has generally been on decline ever since.