Professional recruiters are reporting increased hiring activity in most sectors.

The latest figures about the health of the jobs market released by the Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC) should be good news to business start-ups.

Recruitment consultants will be glad to hear that 96 per cent of employers polled in the REC's April JobsOutlook expect their permanent workforces to remain the same or grow within the next three months.

This represents an increase of two per cent on the previous month, and the percentage of employers who expect their use of agency staff to grow or stay the same over the same period is also at a high of 86 per cent.

Welcoming the results, the REC's director of research Roger Tweedy said: "This is the most encouraging sign we have had so far that the jobs market is now gathering momentum led by a higher demand for temporary workers.

"This fits with the feedback from professional recruiters on the ground, who are reporting increased hiring activity in most sectors."

As momentum gathers, recruitment business start-ups can outsource their back office services to an agency in order to concentrate on netting new contracts.