Denmark’s postal service to stop delivering letters:
Denmark’s state-run postal service, PostNord, is to end all letter deliveries at the end of 2025, citing a 90% decline in letter volumes since the start of the century.
The decision brings to an end 400 years of the company’s letter service. Denmark’s 1,500 post boxes will start to disappear from the start of June.
Transport Minister Thomas Danielsen sought to reassure Danes, saying letters would still be sent and received as “there is a free market for both letters and parcels”.
Postal services across Europe are grappling with the decline in letter volumes. Germany’s Deutsche Post said on Thursday it was axing 8,000 jobs, in what it called a “socially responsible manner”.
Deutsche Post has 187,000 employees and staff representatives said they feared more cuts were to come.
Denmark had a universal postal service for 400 years until the end of 2023, but as digital mail services have taken hold, the use of letters has fallen dramatically.
Fifteen hundred workers facing losing their jobs, out of a workforce of 4,600.“It’s a super sad day. Not just for our department, but for the 1,500 who face an uncertain future,” employee Anders Raun Mikkelsen told Danish broadcaster DR.
Denmark ranks as one of the world’s most digitalised countries.There’s an app for almost everything: few people use cash, and Danes even carry drivers’ licences and health cards on their smartphones.
Bank statements, bills, and correspondence from local authorities are all sent electronically.
Public services send communications via a Digital Post app or other platforms and PostNord Denmark says the letter market is no longer profitable.Letter numbers have fallen since the start of the century from 1.4 billion to 110 million last year.
In the US, First-Class mail is down from 103.65 billion pieces in 2001 to 44.3 billion pieces in 2024. That’s the lowest level since 1968.
The US Constitution gives Congress the authority “to establish Post Offices and post Roads” (Article I, Section 8, Clause 7). This “Postal Clause” is how we today have a United States Postal Service (USPS). The USPS was reorganized in 1970 as an independent government agency. Although Congress still oversees USPS operations, it does not receive taxpayer funding for daily operations.
The US is likely a few years out from dismantling the USPS, but it’s hard to see it existing here any more than Denmark in the longer term and for the same reasons: People use email and send packages via private carriers like FedEx and UPS.