After watching the slow-motion death of snail mail for months, we should know by now that any headline about the U.S. Postal Service is bound to be bad. Today comes news that the agency will be cutting 27,000 jobs and close half of its mail-processing centers (223 of 457) by this time next year, Bloomberg reports.  

Fortunately for workers themselves, the cut will come come though attrition rather direct layoffs. And though 27,000 would be an enormous portion of most companies' workforces, when you're one of the world's largest employers (the USPS ranked fourth in the world in 2009), that only turn out to be 4.9 percent. Since 2009, the USPS has shed more jobs rather any other employer worldwide, cutting staff by 6 percent between 2009 and 2010, according to The Economist, and scaling back by another 35,000 positions last September.

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