Even as total work hours dropped again last year, the U.S. Postal Service’s overtime costs kept climbing, according to a newly released audit by the agency’s inspector general.

Paid overtime costs for fiscal 2012 amounted to $3.53 billion, up almost 7 percent from 2011, the IG found. At one Des Moines, Iowa, distribution center, overtime pay for seven mail handlers ranged from $65,000 to $76,000 each, more than doubling their respective salaries, according to the audit. Although overtime hours are not supposed to account for more than 5 percent of total workhours under a USPS management target, they added up to 7.8 percent last year, the audit said. After falling sharply in 2009, the proportion of overtime hours has risen every year since.

Auditors attributed the increases in part to the continued downsizing of the Postal Service’s workforce. But at individual mail processing plants, they also found that the number of employees did not always mesh with the workload.

via Audit: Postal Service overtime costs topped $3.5 billion last year- Federal Times