USPS is probably a bit more computerized than most people imagine, or can imagine.
Headquarters grew mostly through shutting down field management units such as regional headquarters, Districts, MSCs and a wide variety of other management type operations.
The net number of "executives" and specialists in that top layer is thinner now than at any time in USPS or Post Office Department history.
USPS has its own economists, CPAs, lawyers (to bring suit against people who don't pay or who fail to properly haul mail ~ that's all private contracts BTW ~ or to aid DOJ lawyers in putting away bad guys).
The Inspector General, that looks like a budding growth industry, carved a chunk out of other management type structures including the Postal Inspection Service. It's a mix of cops and analysts for the most part ~ got to know an awful lot of them simply by being one of the world's foremost experts in mailing practices).
My primary area for many years was in the field of Classification (pricing and collections for you folks in the private sector) ~ we went from having about 1300 people available to us in 1978 to about 347 in 2004. A lot of that reduction was made possible through automation, mechanization, computerization and robotics.
Excess personnel position were transferred to other jobs closer to the primary mission ~ moving the mail.
For most of the period you were looking at the number of mail pieces handled per person increased substantially, denoting massive productivity increases, and the density of supervisory personnel of any kind decreased substantially throughout the system.
During the current downturn field supervisory positions have been cut like there's no tomorrow. Some guy retires his job is gone.
What I hear about Headquarters you don't want to know but it's brutal!
Well, I am glad to hear the postal service has joined the rest of the country in flatening out its organizational structure. I had a chance some years ago admitedly to view a district office structure and was startled by the sea of white shirts doing very little. Perhaps my perception is clouded by that eye opener.
Perhaps the postal service is losing money due to its legacy committments, I don’t know enough about their cost structure to know that and if so then things seem to be running fine now...if not and the legacy costs are just adding to a problem, then it is time for a change. What I do know though is a service company should not look at cutting services as a means to improve its cost structure. Something is lacking in an equation where that is the only variable.