The UK's employment outlook is the most positive it has been for three years, with small firms driving job creation, according to a report.
But recruitment firm Manpower warned that while small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) were predicting job creation in the coming months, hiring intentions among the country's biggest businesses had fallen for three quarters in a row and remained "flat".
Those in the finance, banking and business services sector were most optimistic, while engineers and computer specialists were most in demand, a survey of 2,100 employers found.
Manpower managing director Mark Cahill said: "It seems when it comes to job vacancies, small is beautiful. Candidates sometimes assume that bigger is better when it comes to employers, but these statistics clearly point to the opposite.
"SMEs were amongst the first to shed jobs during the recession, but we're now seeing them build their workforce again and becoming an increasingly important source of job creation in the UK.
"The greatest unmet demand is for highly sought-after candidates in national skills shortage roles, such as engineers and IT specialists. Engineers have, it seems, become the new plumbers.
"We've been warned for such a long time to expect large-scale public sector job cuts in central government, but in our experience that is just not happening.
"If the Government really intends to make the large-scale redundancies initially suggested, ministers must realise that the longer they wait to start this process, the harder it will eventually become.
"Current conditions therefore do call into question whether the big redundancies will happen at all."
Employers in the West Midlands, east of England and North East were most positive about the employment outlook, while those in Scotland were most pessimistic.
The report comes ahead of new unemployment figures tomorrow.
