The Postal Service has failed to make the necessary cuts in costs that its competitors have made to respond to the downturn.

During the first year of the recession, the Postal Service awarded members of the American Postal Workers Union three substantial wage increases.

The Postal Service has had an oversized network of undersize and obsolete mail processing facilities.

"Without question, the Postal Service has far more facilities than it needs and those facilities it does require often are not used in the most efficient manner." - 2003 President's Commission

"USPS does not need - and cannot afford to maintain - its costly excess infrastructure capacity. USPS has begun efforts to consolidate some mail processing operations, but much more needs to be done. Since 2005, USPS has close only 2 of its 270 processing and distribution centers." - GAO Report, April, 2010

The Postal Service itself acknowledges that the size of its workforce is too large. On Aug. 6, 2009, at a Senate subcommittee hearing on Federal Management, Government Information, Federal Services and International Security, Post Master General Potter remarked that the workforce - 630,000 full-time employees at the time - was still approximately 80,000 positions above an "optimum" level.