It’s official: start-up figures are at an all time high. Last year 471,500 of you followed your dreams and started your own businesses. That’s 3% more than in 2006.

Might not sound a lot but the latest stats, provided by Barclays, show a 17% increase in start-up activity over the past 20 years and a 15% rise in the overall business population to 2.9million – that’s one company per 8.7 people of working age.

If you’re reading this as an employee secretly plotting your escape, that figure suggests you’re not on your own.

And who can be surprised? As The Apprentice gears up for a fourth series and Dragons’ Den a sixth, it’s abundantly clear that ‘business’ and our new generation of celebrity entrepreneurs are now firmly established in the nation’s psyche.

Enterprise is in schools; it’s a viable career path. Environmentalists and those with a social conscious are using enterprise to not just express themselves but achieve change and generate incomes for their causes.

And, of course, in an age of choice, more people see starting their own business as a way of achieving a better standard of living.

A note of caution, however. The UK’s last major economic downturn in 1992 saw start-up rates tumble to a low of 290,000 and the percentage of business closures increase to 18%.

That figure had subsided to 11% by 2003, but amid growing concerns over the current economic climate it grew to 17% last year. So what if, as many analysts suggest, there’s no short-term relief? Despite hitting a new high, are we about to see a drop off in start-ups?

Well, maybe – although I’d suggest not. Yes, it’ll be harder to raise finance and let’s face it, anyone who’s struggling to pay their mortgage is going to think twice about quitting a secure salary, but… there are plenty of reasons why people will continue to start-up.

I talked last week about how once you’ve decided to start a business then the banality of 9-to-5 is intolerable, but the reason people will continue to overlook the increasing obstacles to starting-up is that it’s actually now pretty easy.

Looking beyond startups.co.uk there’s a wealth of information, support and advice for entrepreneurs and the financial barriers to entry are almost non-existent. After all, the economy doesn’t stop you grabbing a laptop and a mobile and starting up a website.

There’s a naivety to all this, of course, and the cynics among you will be rightly screaming that anyone can start a business, the real challenge is keeping it afloat and growing it.

Fair enough, but what’s the answer: discourage people from starting-up because the economy increased the risk factor? And exactly who would you discourage, those you’ve spent years trying to support?

If we really do aspire to emulate the US’ enterprise culture then perhaps we just need to accept people will fail – and make it easier for them to try again. Or even, Mr Darling, create an environment that attracts, not discourages, investors.

The government wanted more people starting-up and it’s got it. But what now?