WASHINGTON — If you need to buy a stamp for sending a letter, the price just went up by about a nickel. 

The U.S. Postal Service has enacted a rate hike on the cost of a first-class stamp, from 73 cents to 78 cents. 

The change, which took effect Sunday, July 13, was originally proposed in April, and had to be approved by the Postal Regulatory Committee, which oversees mail in the U.S. 

Similar five-cent increases are also hitting postcards, metered letters and international mail. 

This is the eighth increase in forever stamp prices since the start of 2019. There were two price hikes in 2024 and 2023. Like the 2024 increase from 68 cents to 73 cents, the postal service claims the additional cost is needed to achieve financial stability. 

Over the past decade, stamp prices have been steadily on the rise. In 2015, a single first-class stamp was 48 cents.

Former U.S. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy previously warned postal customers to get used to “uncomfortable” rate hikes as the Postal Service seeks to become self-sufficient. He said price increases were overdue after “at least 10 years of a defective pricing model.”

DeJoy resigned in March after nearly five years in the position, leaving as President Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency had floated the idea of privatizing mail service.

The postal service has been under fire in recent years, especially during both of Trump’s terms in office, for not being a profitable part of the U.S. government. 

In early January, the USPS announced a voluntary early retirement incentive and estimated around 10,000 workers would take the offer. 

The post office, an independent government agency, employs roughly 640,000 people and has cut roughly 30,000 jobs since 2021, according to Reuters. 

DeJoy, the former postmaster general, wrote in a letter to Congress in January that USPS is projected to lose $200 billion. It didn’t state when the projected loss would have hit, but USPS lost an estimated $9.5 billion in 2024.

“It has long been known that the Postal Service has a broken business model that was not financially sustainable without critically necessary and fundamental core change,” he wrote.