After eleven months, the Postal Service’s potential annual rate authority under the CPI cap is getting clearer. After the January CPI was released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics on February 13, the annualized cap stood at 2.599% down 0.032% from where it was a month earlier.
The February CPI will be released on March 11; the rate authority calculated at that time will be used by the Postal Service in its early April price filing – that has to occur before the March CPI is announced if the annual rate cycle is to be preserved. The calculated value of the annualized cap has fluctuated between 2.6% and 2.7% over the past year, so the “final” number, after the March CPI, may well be at the lower end of that range.
The USPS estimates
Like the rest of us, the Postal Service is watching where the CPI cap may land; its current estimate is a bit lower – 2.545% - but that will be supplemented by the additional rate authorities established by the Postal Regulatory Commission in November 2020.
