Without a financial boost to the U.S. Postal Service, the economic status of many Black Americans employed by the agency is at risk, Politico reports.
In addition to the financial future of the mail service, the estimated 669,000 people who work for USPS are also facing a financial threat. According to Politico, 27% of USPS employees are Black, which is more than double that of the national labor force.
Black Americans make up a large portion of the agency’s work force because the post office is located in all 50 states and follows the federal government’s anti-discrimination policies, which has historically made it easier for Black workers to become employees of the postal service.
Because it is a government job, workers receive pay and benefits that many Black Americans didn’t have access to when racial discrimination was running rampant. According to Politico, a unionized postal worker can earn $75,000 a year.
Monique Morrissey, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, told Politico that postal employees have “secure retirement, secure health benefits — and these are even more valuable to workers of color than they are to white households, who might have inherited money or have other cushions to rely on.”
Jonathan Smith, a Black mail-processing equipment mechanic, told Politico that the USPS made his family “part of the middle class.”
His grandfather worked for the agency and so did his aunts and uncles. He became an employee in 1988. He said the Postal Service is “that last symbol of the power of the middle class” for Black Americans.
But that status has been in a decline for several years. Since 1999, employment at the agency has dropped more than 37% due to financial struggles and an increase in automation.
And the drop in employment numbers isn’t expected to end. According to the Labor Department, overall employment of Postal Service workers will decline 21% from 2018 to 2028.
Morrissey said elimination of jobs has “repercussions beyond just the workers themselves, for the Black middle class,” Morrissey said.
Postmaster General Louis DeJoy has said the agency would freeze hiring and seek future early retirement authority “for employees not represented by a collective bargaining agreement.”
Those plans have been put on hold until after November’s election.
But plans to change the service could unravel the racial equity that the agency exudes.
“One of the things that attracted me was its commitment to diversity,” said Smith, who heads the American Postal Workers Union’s New York Metro chapter.
William Spriggs, an economics professor at Howard University and the AFL-CIO's chief economist, told Politico that because the USPS is located across the country it allowed Blacks an “easy route to a federal position” because it was “less easy to discriminate.”
© 2026 Newsmax. All rights reserved.