Outsourcing and Opportunity Costs Article

Some poor graduate students may decide that they have better things to do than clean. "Outsourcing household tasks meant they had to take on more debt, but they calculated -- correctly -- that spending an extra hour working on a paper was better for their lifetime expected earnings than spending that same hour vacuuming" (Rampell 1). And the more people avail themselves of such sources, quite frequently the greater the proliferation of outsourcing entities and hence a subsequent downward pressure on price in a competitive market like cleaning services. The downturn in the economy has also generated many more people looking for part or full-time work doing 'odd jobs' (Rampell 2). This lowers the opportunity cost of money spent on outsourcing.

On an individual basis, outsourcing can also make time for more leisure. For example, a working mother can outsource housework to spend more time at the gym or playing with her children. Of course, the definition of leisure will vary from person to person (some people enjoy spending their leisure time cooking, for example, while others consider it work and prefer to outsource it). Regardless, this classical economic calculation of the opportunities lost either to maximize economic benefits from the point-of-view of a corporation or personal benefits such as increasing one's salary by working longer by outsourcing childcare or increasing personal enjoyment through outsourcing household tasks seems to be supported by the…