Federal Reports

The Postal Service’s leave benefits have generally remained unchanged for decades. They offer a set number of days employees can use for reasons specific to that benefit. Employees who take time off must classify the type of leave they use, which increases administrative requirements. Conversely, the leave benefits in the private sector have changed significantly, resulting in reduced costs and time employees are away from work. At the request of the Postal Service, we benchmarked Postal Service leave benefits and paid holidays with six private sector companies and two government agencies.

As part of its effort to control personnel costs, the U.S. Postal Service has identified the need to create a new retirement plan for future employees. To that end, the Postal Service requested we benchmark its retirement benefits against similar private and government programs. Benchmarking is useful here because the Postal Service is required to offer benefits that are comparable to those in the private sector. While the Postal Service’s retirement benefits are comparable in many ways to those offered in the private sector, we found that some differences exist.