Postal Rates To Rise In April

For an update, please see The Elephant Has Ears: Some Good News for Mailers Along With the Rate Hikes.

The U.S. Postal Service will announce rate increases for most classes of mail, but apparently not for the First-Class stamp, later today, according to a reliable source.

Postal officials put the word out today to some mailing associations that rates for the "market-dominant" classes -- First-Class, Standard, and Periodicals -- would rise in mid-April. The average increase for each class is capped at 1.741%, based on annual changes in the Consumer Price Index.

A postal official indicated it would keep the price of a First-Class stamp at 44 cents, enabling it to impose higher-than-cap increases on First-Class flats.

If the Postal Service doesn't announce new rates today, the cap would probably decrease when the December 2010 CPI is released tomorrow morning, as explained in USPS Delay Means Smaller Price Increases for Mailers.