In a media interview last week, I was asked for my views on self employment versus employment for the older jobseeker. I couldn’t help but think that choice of any kind would be a fine thing for many older people out of work.

What I actually said was that self employment was fine but not everyone’s cup of tea.

But before we go overboard about the value of this form of earning a living and its relevance for older people, a reality check is in order.

The incidence of self employment increases with age (see note) but is becoming self employed really born of a widespread desire to be one’s own boss, or is it the infant of an ageist recruitment industry, for example?

In this, the European Year of Active Ageing, we hear a lot about the way employment supports engagement with the wider society, but I am not sure how far this really works for the self employed. It can be a poor way of life for the gregarious and may entail a fair bit of enforced isolation in a one person office somewhere.

As for its value in drawing on a lifetime’s skills and experience, it is equally arguable that being self employed entails some muddling along inefficiently coping with tasks that are newly learned and not particularly enjoyable.

Perhaps this enforced learning and brain activity does the older worker a power of good. There are other ways of keeping active however.

And for what? The most modest of incomes in some cases. Fussing around with fees and expenses chits may seem hardly worth the quibbling.

Perhaps I put the case against too harshly. There is certainly value in keeping active, not least because it is a better option than having the blot of unemployment on a CV. I certainly don’t regret my own experience of this way of life.

Nothing has to be for ever though. The possibility of moving in and out of self employment is an option even if its prospects as a permanent shift are less appealing.

But there is no doubt that self employment is growing. (The CIPD in its latest Work Audit  report points to an astonishing 4.14 million people now “self employed”.)

Employment growth of any kind is welcome but this is not entrepneurialism on the march!

One reason for it probably lies in the differing degrees of support available to jobseekers and the self employed.

(Older jobseekers search in vain for training grants while self employed people have quite a number of options such as small start up loans and grants to cover training or setting up web sites.)

More tangible support for the older jobseeker to avoid that long and damaging period of ‘waiting for work’ could make a difference.

Recently a Bulgarian Big Issue seller fought and won a legal right to be considered self employed. (The individual concerned was able to claim allowances in consequence, apparently.)

If Big Issue sellers are swelling the ranks of the self employed, I wouldn’t want to jump up and down in excitement.

The end of the cost advantage for unscrupulous employers using short term agency staff to undercut permanent staff is another factor.

With the Agency Workers Regulations introduced in October last year, some employers have side stepped their effect by insisting former agency staff become self employed. I understand that people in former agency workers roles are now being hired in the shrinking public sector.

One way to shed light on these matters is to draw contrast between the new self employment arrivals with the well established self employed.

Gender balances of the new and old self employees differ, for example. While over two thirds of the established self employed are men, 60 per cent of the arrivistes are women.

I was impressed when I saw a class of keen older women embarking on self employment careers through a training course at London Metropolitan University recently, but there are some less well prepared, low paid workers spuriously described as “self employed”.

The working hours of the new and older self employed also tell a story. While two-thirds of the established self employed work more than 30 hours a week, nine out of ten of the new arrivals work less than 30 hours.

How many are genuinely happy with their relatively short hours one can only guess.

The CIPD argues that self employment is a convenient status for jobbing peripheral workers desperate to avoid unemployment.

Of course, even if there is a degree to which ‘self employment’ is used to cover up lack of support for older jobseekers, this hardly condemns it completely as a way of working. I am sure it will continue to be an attractive choice for many.

However, we should be cautious of data suggesting its booming popularity. The true extent of joblessness may be being neatly hidden by a political preference for a certain employment form.

It might work of course. We could be on the brink of a remarkable economic transformation as the seeds of infant small businesses are sown abundantly during the recession.

Personally, I doubt it, but if just one of those thousands of small businesses were to morph into a Face Book or a Google, plenty of jobs would be created.

However I don’t think that this is sufficient reason to button up and accept this so called boom in self employment at face value. It isn’t and we shouldn’t!