A new report from Jobcentre Plus shows that over a quarter of British businesses were on the look out to hire new faces last year.

It found that in 2005 27% of businesses, 586,000 establishments, were actively recruiting new staff which is up from 559,000 in 2004. Small businesses were particularly active with over half (56%) recruiting or trying to recruit externally in the last 12 months; up 4% on the previous year.

In addition to more employers looking to hire, more vacancies are also being successfully filled across the country - 88% in 2005 compared to 86% in 2004.

It found that despite a marginal drop in the overall number of vacancies available across the country, in some regions the volume of available jobs has grown considerably - the total number of vacancies is up 25% in Scotland and 20% in the South-West.

Jim Murphy, minister for employment, says: "The results reveal the current strength of the UK labour market. The number of companies looking to recruit new staff is on the increase at a time when employment is at record levels. We have set ourselves an ambitious target of reaching an 80% employment rate and recognise that we need to do more to help match those who are now looking for work with the over 600 thousand vacancies in the UK economy.”

The report also revealed that although smaller employers were the most active recruiters, larger and medium-sized organisations advertised the most number of vacancies. Of all the vacancies advertised externally last year, 28% were in organisations between 10 - 50 staff and 29% were in organisations with 50 - 250 staff. Smaller organisations with less than 10 employees accounted for 18% of vacancies.