EMPLOYERS across the UK are predicting a sharp rise in opportunities for graduates, a new survey shows.

The Association of Graduate Recruiters (AGR) has forecast a 12 per cent rise in vacancies following an increase of four per cent last year as the economy continues to recover.

Some six per cent of those increases will be in Scotland, according to the AGR report, significantly more than in Northern Ireland and Wales - although London continues to dominate the graduate recruitment market with 45 per cent of vacancies there.

Stephen Isherwood, chief executive of the AGR, said: "Graduate vacancies continue to grow year on year and graduates are still more likely to be employed than non-graduates."

However, he warned that employers would have recruited more graduates if they could have found candidates with better skills.

AGR members reported 1,422 unfilled vacancies in 2014 with the largest proportion occurring in the IT and telecoms sector where 12 per cent of vacancies remained unfilled.

Alastair Sim, director of Universities Scotland, welcomed the latest findings.

He said: "The continually high and growing demand for graduate-level skills is a vote of confidence from employers in the quality of Scotland's graduates recruited."

Mr Sim said employer satisfaction was already high, with 86 per cent of those surveyed last year stating their satisfaction with university graduates' preparedness for work.

He added: "Recent figures confirmed that graduates from Scotland's universities have the highest level of employment or further study in the UK and the lowest level of unemployment in the UK. Graduates from Scotland's universities also have the highest rate of graduate-level jobs within six months of finishing university.

"Scotland's universities have been embedding employability as a core value in their learning and teaching strategies and are working with employers, students and others to produce graduates with the ambition, knowledge and skills that businesses are looking for."

The AGR survey also found that more than a quarter of graduate roles in 2013/14 were filled by people who had previously worked for the same employer through an internship or placement.

Mr Isherwood said: "The importance of work experience cannot be stressed to students enough."

Sectors predicting a growth in vacancies from 2014 to 2015 include IT and telecoms, the public sector, construction and engineering. The largest recruiting sector in 2013/14 remains accountancy and professional services.

The online survey was based on the responses of 201 AGR members in the UK, who offered over 21,682 graduate vacancies in 2014.