Salary
Average Salary: $56,490
Expected Lifetime Earnings: $2,358,345
Whether you're receiving, sorting, or delivering the mail, the pay of a typical postal worker varies less than the delivery window of a next-day-delivery delivery. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, postal service clerks, sorters, processors, and processing machine operators are making a median salary of $53,090 a year, while postal carriers lord over their co-workers with a vastly superior $56,490 a year (source).
Those wages seem fairly standard across the postal departments, but that's not to say that there aren't a few better-paying positions being dreamed of daily behind mail truck steering wheels. Daydreamed of, that is. (We hope.) A ladder made of mail doesn't go far, but if you were to reach the top, you could be looking at an annual salary of up to $85,000 as a hotshot postmaster or mail superintendent. Of course, these jobs are rare, and the pay will depend on the city and size of center.
Overall, the pay for even the lowest rungs of this job is pretty darn great, especially when you consider how much higher education was required to get the job. How much, you ask? Let's see...carry the one...reduce the fraction...annnnnd...it's zero. Yes, zero higher education is required to sling letters for the USPS.
But, you know what they say about things that seem too good to be true. The postal service is going through massive changes in the wake of Internet commerce and a jittery economy, which has led to widespread job cuts and lowered wages. Better get in while the getting is good, as "they" also say.