Biden inherited a USPS crisis. Here's how Democrats want to fix it.

WASHINGTON - The U.S. Postal Service today reported its financial results for fiscal year 2020 (October 1, 2019 - September 30, 2020), as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to have an unpredictable impact on the economy and the Postal Service.

Operating revenue was $73.1 billion for 2020, an increase of nearly $2.0 billion compared to the prior year, driven by an increase in Shipping and Packages revenue of $5.8 billion, or 25.3 percent. While the Postal Service's results for the first half of 2020 continued prior-year trends, the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in significant shifts in demand affecting all service categories in the second half of the year.

As a result of the pandemic, and to a lesser extent, secular mail declines, the Postal Service’s volume from mail services, its largest sales category, declined significantly for the full year, as First-Class Mail declined 2.3 billion pieces, or 4.2 percent, and Marketing Mail declined 11.5 billion pieces, or 15.2 percent. Mail volume began to show slight improvement in the last few weeks of the year, although this was driven in part by the temporary surge in political and election mail associated with the recent general election cycle.

Package volume grew by nearly 1.2 billion pieces, or 18.8 percent, compared to last year due to the surge in e-commerce. Although package volume growth has recently slowed since its early fourth-quarter peak, the Postal Service believes that consumer behavior has evolved during the pandemic as the nation has increasingly relied on the safety and convenience of e-commerce.