In 2025, as the White House proposed privatizing the USPS, Iowa farmer, Chris Petersen, was alarmed. Living 20 miles from town, the Postal Service is a vital connection for him.
“I’m on different pills and we get them in the mail so we’re not running the town every day. We order [vaccines] for the hogs … mail ordered out of Kansas. If the Post Office wasn’t delivering and picking up the bills and everything else, it would take lots of time …hours per week and the gas money and the driving time and everything else,” he warned.
The support of rural communities is vital for us. Elected officials from rural districts will cast key votes on the future of USPS financing. For many rural communities, that mail carrier delivery or village Post Office might be the only local service they regularly receive.
A recently updated report from The Institute for Policy Studies shows just how important the Postal Service is to rural areas.
Good Jobs
The report found that in the 15 states with the largest share of their population in rural areas, roughly 75,238 people work directly for the Postal Service. The total mailing industry employs more than 761,000 people and generates nearly $146 billion in revenue per year in these 15 rural states.
On average, postal workers are paid over $9,000 a year more than comparable occupations—and that’s only looking at pay, not pensions or benefits.
Rural Services
The Postal Service is often the only daily delivery service in many rural areas, and it’s the most cost effective. Many for-profit carriers like FedEx and UPS add surcharges for rural and remote deliveries. Studies found that these surcharges apply to 102 million Americans (about 31% of the population).
The USPS delivers an estimated 1.2 billion prescription drug shipments a year. This is a vital service for rural communities, where residents are increasingly likely to live long distances from the nearest pharmacy. The number of pharmacies in rural communities declined 5.9% between 2018 and 2023. Veterans, 2.7 million of whom live in rural communities, receive 84% of their prescriptions by mail.
Vote-by-Mail
Vote-by-Mail is a vital lifeline for democracy in rural areas, and it is important that we defend it.
In 2024, the USPS securely delivered 99 million ballots to and from voters. The report notes that “Rural residents rely particularly heavily on the mail-in option, in part because polling sites are often long distances from their homes. Nationwide, half of rural county polling sites serve an area greater than 62 square miles, compared to just 2 square miles for urban sites.”
When We Unite, We Win
Speaking about his farm and rural community, Chris Petersen summed it all up: “The Postal Service is essential to a functioning economy. And you know, it’s about everything I’ve been talking about here to help make the economy work; to help it function.”
The fact that we can be found all over the country, helping sustain the very communities we live in, is a big part of the reason we can and must win our campaign to safeguard the Postal Service against private corporate greed.
Read the full report at usmailnotforsale.org/ips.
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