Marketplace’s Alice Wilder has been waiting for a love letter to arrive at her home since March. It was sent by her boyfriend David Scarisbrick, who lives 800 miles away in Lake Forest, Illinois.

Years of financial troubles and political turmoil mean that those still sending letters are experiencing longer delivery times. That’s leading Wilder to consider switching to a more modern form of communication: email. 

That’s bad news for the USPS. The Office of the Inspector General reports that the volume of first class mail has dropped 52% between 2008 and 2023, and they attribute much of that to what they call “electronic diversion,” the spread of smartphones and digital communication in the U.S. 

The pandemic has only exacerbated the problem, said Karen Hult, professor of political science at Virginia Tech. “We send emails, we do other kinds of things and so I think that’s among the revenue concerns that the postal service has faced,” Hult said. 

But can an email match the romance of a handwritten love letter? Not according to Hult. “There can be a real privacy to letters, there also is just a real intimacy to reading people’s handwritten comments,” Hult said. 

When Marketplace announced layoffs in April, Wilder’s anxious refreshing of her inbox was interrupted with a love letter, delivered via email, from Scarisbrick. “I worry that every second I wait to send this email is one in which a worse meaner email will catch you unaware,” Scarisbrick wrote. This letter might not have come through the mailbox, but it arrived right on time.