With jobs more plentiful these days, Matt Tait could easily find full-time work. But he wanted to focus on his wooden toy business and took a part-time gig at Team Detroit, Ford Motor’s advertising agency.

It’s a win-win. Tait’s boss is happy to have him because the 31-year-old graphic designer’s outside activities make him more creative. And Tait has time to run Tait Design Co., which sells balsa airplanes and yo-yos of his own design.

Six million Americans like Tait are choosing to work part time, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Typically young and college-educated, they’re not doing so because personal or economic circumstances forced them to. Rather, many are abandoning the traditional career path their parents took and working just enough hours to pay the bills or pursue a passion: toy making, puppetry, nonprofit advocacy. Their numbers have increased 12 percent since 2007, according to the BLS, a shift with broad implications for hiring practices.

“The workforce of the past was organized around company,” says Chauncy Lennon, who runs JPMorgan’s workforce initiatives and is studying flexible working arrangements. “The workforce of the future is organized around the worker. If we can’t find the right people, it’s going to hurt our bottom line.”

Businesses keen to tap this pool of well-educated workers are tailoring jobs to individuals – not the other way round. Team Detroit is letting Tait take a few months off later this year so he can focus on filling orders in the holiday season. Deloitte Tax is breaking projects into pieces and parceling some out to part-timers. Customer-service giant TeleTech Holdings texts job alerts to a pool of workers, who tell bosses if they’re available or not.

More than 20 million Americans are working less than 35 hours a week for “non-economic reasons,” according to the BLS. In other words, it’s a deliberate choice – not because they can’t find full-time jobs. Two-thirds of the 20 million are working part time because they have family obligations, attend school, or are semiretired.

The final third are the 6 million this story focuses on – many of them people, like Tait, who are working part time because they don’t want to commit to one job or employer. No one knows if the trend will endure or will become more widespread. But if more and more Americans choose this career path, companies will have to adapt, says John Challenger of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, a Chicago human-resources consulting company.

Tait says he made good money for four years as a full-time graphic designer before joining Team Detroit part time.

“Something was missing,” he says. “I always wanted to build my own business.”

In interviews, workers in their 20s and 30s describe watching their parents commit to one employer for their entire careers, only to lose their jobs after the financial crisis. Or working in a job they didn’t like to pay the bills or chase the American Dream. They don’t want to be that person.

By 2020, as much as 40 percent of the workforce may be part time, according to Mike Preston, Deloitte’s chief talent officer. The company has created what it calls Deloitte Open Talent to network with and identify workers who are opting to forgo full-time work for some other arrangement.