The Roots of Jobsharing

The Roots: Jobsharing Comes from California

Before I tell you more about my own journey, I would like to take a step back — to a place where this story began long before my student days. The origins of jobsharing. Not in Germany. Not in Switzerland. But on the west coast of the United States. More precisely: in California.

When I was researching my diploma thesis in the early 1980s — without the internet, without databases, with weeks of waiting for interlibrary loans from other universities — the search for clues kept leading me across the Atlantic. Most of the academic publications, practical reports and early experiences came from the USA. Over there, people already seemed to be discussing questions that were barely being asked in Germany. But where did this story really begin? The answer took me surprisingly far back.

1937: An Almost Forgotten Attempt in a Canning Factory

It is a story that is easy to overlook — and one that, during my research, would not let go of me all the same. In a canning factory in Carmel, California, a man named Gaylord Nelsen asked in 1937 to share his full-time job with another employee. Today we would recognise that immediately as jobsharing. Back then, the idea was far ahead of its time. The request was refused. Why? Nobody knows exactly any more. Perhaps the notion of shared responsibility simply did not fit the working world of the 1930s — a time when, for most people, a job was indivisible. Or perhaps the organisational imagination was simply lacking. One thing is certain: the idea was there. But the time was not yet ripe. It would take almost three decades before anything more came of it.

The Late 1960s: A Generation Rethinks Work

As I followed this development during my research, I quickly understood one thing: jobsharing is not a concept that was drawn up at some point in a consultancy office. It grew out of life itself. In the late 1960s, a great deal began to change in Californian society. New ways of living emerged, traditional role models were questioned — and the world of work was not left untouched. Some young women in employment developed an answer to a question that was on many of their minds: they wanted qualified work — but not in the classic full-time model. And this is a crucial point, one I considered important then and still do today: it was not about unemployment. Not about a shortage of positions. Not about a stopgap. It was a deliberate decision in favour of a different way of working. More scope to shape things. More flexibility. More compatibility between working life and personal life. Their answer: one position. Two people. Shared responsibility. This laid the foundation for what we know today as modern jobsharing.

A Term Takes Shape

What occupied me most during my research was the question: at what point did a lived practice become a defined concept? I found the answer in the work of the researcher Olmsted. In 1977 he was the first to use the term “job sharing” explicitly — and his definition was precise:

„a voluntary work arrangement in which two people hold responsibility for what was formerly one full-time position.“

Voluntary. Shared responsibility. A formerly full-time position. I still remember reading those lines — via interlibrary loan, somewhere between the waiting and the smell of the library. What held my attention was not the academic definition as such. It was the word voluntary. Jobsharing was not an emergency measure, not a reduction in working hours imposed from above. It was a conscious decision by people who wanted to shape work differently. In 1979, Olmsted went further: “two people sharing the responsibility of one full-time position with salary and fringe benefits pro-rated.” Two people share the responsibility of a full-time position — including pro-rata salary and benefits. That put into words an idea that has stayed with me to this day: jobsharing does not simply mean “working less”. It is about shared responsibility, shared knowledge and a new form of professional collaboration.

Why the USA Was Further Ahead — and What That Meant for Me

While jobsharing was later discussed in Germany primarily as a labour market policy instrument, the idea developed in the USA from a different direction. The public sector recognised a practical advantage early on: jobsharing made it possible to attract and retain qualified specialists — without additional cost structures. An idea that sounds remarkably modern. In 1978, jobsharing finally gained a formal basis as well: the Part-Time Career Employment Act officially permitted jobsharing in the US federal administration. An idea that had been turned down in a canning factory in Carmel had found its way into the American federal government. Researchers such as Frease and Zwacki also described jobsharing at the time as more than a flexible working-time arrangement. They associated it with concrete expectations: higher productivity, greater motivation, better use of skills. That was new — and for me, as a student trying to open the subject up for Germany, it was exciting and frustrating at the same time. Exciting, because the idea carried so much more than was being discussed in Germany. Frustrating, because I could sense it: it will be a long time before that perspective arrives here too.

What Still Moves Me About This Story Today

As I read page after page of that American research back then, something became clear to me that I have never shaken off since: Jobsharing was never simply a working-time model. Even its origins spoke of bigger questions: how do people want to work? How can responsibility be shared — not as a weakness, but as a strength? And why should professional success necessarily be tied to a single full-time model? These are exactly the questions that have accompanied my own work — then and to this day.

What Came Next

Theory was one thing. But did jobsharing actually work in practice? By the 1970s, the USA had already carried out the first systematic studies. What they found surprised me at the time — and still does today.

In the next part I show what the first major jobsharing study from San Francisco found — and why the results turned much of what people then thought about part-time work on its head.