PROVIDENCE – The U.S. Postal Service plans to cut 24 positions in its Southeast New England district, but the affected workers will be able to apply for other open positions, a spokeswoman told Providence Business News today.

The two dozen positions being eliminated all come from management, plant, maintenance and support staff, local postal service spokeswoman Barbara Elman told Providence Business News. All the employees whose jobs are being cut will be applying for other positions that have become vacant due to attrition, she said.

The restructuring will take place over the next few months, she said.

In additional to Rhode Island, the Southeast New England postal district also includes the Brockton area and Cape Cod.

The positions cut in the Providence-based district are being eliminated as part of a nationwide round of 25,000 job cuts by the cash-strapped Postal Service, which is forecast to lose $6.5 billion this year and still faces a $1.5 billion budget shortfall, The Associated Press reported.

Postmaster General John Potter on Tuesday told a mailing industry conference that the postal service now employs fewer than 635,000 people, down from about 800,000 a decade ago, The AP said.

Potter predicted the post office will process 170 billion items this year. At its peak, the USPS dealt with more than 210 billion items. “We have an infrastructure that, quite frankly, we cannot afford based on the income we’re receiving,” he said.

Although there has been some talk of reducing the number of days when mail is delivered, on Tuesday Potter said: “People should take it for granted that they’re going to get mail six days a week” for now, and will “hear from us if we should ever change the frequency of delivery.”

The cost of a first-class stamp rose by 2 cents last week to 44 cents.

The U.S. Postal Service was created in 1971 as a quasi-independent U.S. government agency. Before that, the service was the U.S. Post Office Department, a cabinet-level department.

Additional information on the U.S. Postal Service is available at USPS.com.