Postal Service reports preliminary loss of $865 Million in July

[manOman]

http://www.postalnewsblog.com/2009/09/02/usps-loses-865-million-in-july/

excerpt:

"Personnel expenses, mainly salaries and benefits, were up by 3.8% from the prior year, or $167 million. City and rural carrier compensation expenses were up less than a percentage point from July 2008, while customer service and mail processing compensation (i.e. employees who work inside post offices and processing plants) was down by about 7%, or $104 million. The biggest contributors to the increase in compensation were “other” employees, i.e. administrative, maintenance, postmasters, etc., where compensation was up by 33% or $245 million...

If this is true, I believe we've discovered the cause of the USPS "deficit".  LOL

[manOman]

http://www.postalnewsblog.com/2009/09/30/usps-lost-721-million-in-august/

USPS lost $721 million in August

The postal service has published unaudited financial results for the month of August showing a net loss of $721 million for the month, resulting in a fiscal year to date loss of $6.3 billion with one month left to report. Mail volume continued to decline, coming in at 13.2% below August a year ago. The steepest declines continued to be in standard mail, down 18.4%, periodicals, down 14.2%, and package services, down 18.1%. First class volumes were down by 7.8%.

Total revenue was down by just under a half billion dollars for the month, and down by $5.9 billion for the year to date. Expenses were reduced by 10.6% for the month, but are down by just 2.7% for the year to date, a reduction of less than $2 billion.
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Some of the numbers in the above don't quite make sense to me. For instance, why is 1st class down much less than other classes if the internet has such a big effect on mail?

Also, why are expenses down only 2.7%, year to date? Without a thorough analysis of all the numbers, it's hard to say for certain, but my best guess is that there are some games being played with the accounting figures.