‘There is light at the end of the tunnel’ The pandemic had a serious impact on employee availability throughout the year. (CNN) – The United States Postal Service says it’s overwhelmed right now,with an unprecedented number of packages and a limited number of employees due to COVID-19. It has 31,322 retail post offices. UPS has brought on approximately 100,000 seasonal employees to assist in the rush, compounding on 39,000 permanent, new employees the company hired between April and June. When there’s a massive influx of packages in the mail stream, it can take an substantial number of USPS employees to process it. Just 1 month later (November 2, 2020) the latest reports are extremely concerning. Christmas deliveries sent through the US Postal Service have been backed up for weeks due to a record-setting volume of mail and coronavirus-stricken employees, according to … The USPS has 496,924 career employees and another 136,174 that it calls “noncareer” employees. 1 When Congress created the Postal Service to replace the old Post Office Department, it mandated that the new agency support itself through its own revenues, rather than relying on federal appropriations. The USPS continues … A historic amount of packages and rising employee COVID-19 rates are causing significant backlogs at US Postal Service processing facilities before Christmas. They show that there are 2,618 postal workers who are confirmed to be COVID-19 positive and 981 employees presumed to be positive for a total of 3,596 infected employees. Moreover, internal USPS data shows that about 52,700 of the agency's 630,000 employees, or more than 8%, have taken time off at some point during the … By 2019, it was 496,934, a reduction of over 300,000 full-time employees. Published December 23, 2020 7:46 pm . USPS employees are part of the frontline workforce that has higher exposure rates to COVID-19 and are overrepresented by demographic groups that have been worst affected by the pandemic, ACIP said. The Postal Service provides a vital public service that is a part of the nation's critical infrastructure. ... number of USPS employees … The number of postal employees in quarantine were 4,452. However, the last year the Postal Service recorded any profit was 2006, and its cumulative losses since then totaled $83.1 billion as of March 31. .