I spent an awful lot of autumn blogging about The Apprentice, I know, and promised I'd stop - but this new series has once again got me hooked and I can't resist. The candidates are from the same old mould as the last god-knows-how-many lots, but still as entertaining as ever. I am enjoying Jim's evil machincations, Susie's sulky pouting, and Natasha's irritating nasal whine. The tasks are, as ever, pointless and unrealistic, but serve their purpose - to provide us with an hour of amusement at the expense of the Apprentice crew as they balls up big time. We don't want them to succeed, surely - we want Lord Sugar to treat them with the contempt they deserve. The format is the same, but the reward has changed this year. Instead of winning the (frankly dubious) honour of working for Lord Sugar, the contenders get to go into business with him. Sugsie intends to show that you don't need a lot of money to start a business... by injecting £250,000 of his own cash into the venture. Interesting stuff from someone who famously declared that small businesses should stop expecting funding and go it alone. Hmmm. If he can do it, and all that...

Anyway, this got me thinking about swapping employment for self employment and running a business rather than working for the man. With jobless benefit in May increasing by 19,600 (more than double the forecast), it seems that there is not enough employment to go around. Increasingly, this means that people are choosing to start their own businesses rather than compete for the few jobs that may be out there. In the 6 months prior to April, self employment reached a record high of 4.03 million. With a million of them out of work, its the twenty-somethings leading this trend, with the number of self-employed university leavers jumping 46% in the last 6 years, and 4/10 London undergrads already having set up their own business whilst studying. Research by Enterprise UK shows that over half of 14-19 year olds aspire to run their own business.

It's not just the youngsters looking for alternative ways to make a living. We have the "mumtrepreneurs", the stay-at-home mums setting up and running successful businesses from home, which fit in with their kids as well as making them a nice was of cash. Marla Nelson from Coventry, for example, set up her own marketing consultancy last year after being made redundant. The over-50s are also increasingly going it alone, with more of them than ever becoming self employed or starting a business, often with the help of PRIME, who are linked to Age UK and offer support and advice. A4E, based in Yorkshire but operating nationwide, provide redundant and unemployed people with training and support, and last year helped 2,000 people into self employment. With the recession leaving people out of work or unhappy with work, many workers disillusioned with their jobs have decided that they prefer to be their own boss. And they've been kick starting the economy ever since. With David Cameron hailing the next decade as "the age of the entrepreneur", and laucnhing the new Enterprise Allowance to help the unemployed into business, this may just be a taste of things to come.

I can see why BBC have changed the objective of The Apprentice - going into business is what young people (and us older people!) aspire to nowadays, helped in no small part by programmes such as Dragon's Den and The Apprentice. It remains to be seen how successful this new format will be, and how the winner will get on with Lord Sugar in the driving seat. As long as we get to see the "what happened next" show (my favourite part of Dragon's Den), I'll be happy. I just wonder how long the honeymoon period will last...

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