White Paper: Economic Activity as a Driver of Mail
In the past, the letter post volume generally could be predicted by the rate of growth in real GDP, and the state of the economy and business cycle were the major factors that affected mail demand. In the case of the U.S. Postal Service, the total mail volume traditionally has had a positive long-term correlation with the real GDP index with R Square of 95 percent.However, increasing adoption rates for new technologies likely have contributed to the growing perception that "digital communications have posed a growing challenge for mail in the last decade." Has the rate of adoption of electronic communication media reached a tipping point in favor of electronic media, thus irrevocably altering the long-held relationships between mail demand and economic variables, or do those relationships still hold?
http://www.dmnews.com/pdffiles/factors.pdf
