The UK's top employers recruited more graduates this year than they expected, says the High Fliers report, based on a poll of 18,000 final-year students.
The increase is the biggest for four years and follows an unprecedented 23.3% dip between 2007 and 2009.
But graduate numbers have increased by 85,000 to 365,000 since 2007.
This suggests a further increase in graduate-level jobs will be required to keep pace with the higher number of graduates looking for work.
The report says the average number of entry-level graduate roles on offer at the UK's top companies is now 190 per employer.
And a third of these companies increased graduate recruitment targets for 2014.
Overall a rise of 9% had been predicted, compared with the actual rise of 11.6% this year.
The highest number of new graduate jobs are in the top accounting and professional services companies.
This sector saw a 23.8% increase in graduate intake.
The report says: "These latest results mark a very welcome improvement in the graduate job market and suggest that graduate recruitment at the leading employers is now at its highest level for seven years."
Although competition for graduate jobs has eased slightly, it remains tough, with an average of 39 applications per vacancy.
Four-fifths of the UK's leading employers require at least an upper-second-class degree.
And employers received at least 50 applications per position for graduate jobs at:
But more than two-thirds of companies plan to match or expand their recruitment levels next year.
High Fliers managing director, Martin Birchall, said: "It's great news for the 'Class of 2014' leaving university this summer that Britain's top employers have stepped up their graduate recruitment so significantly this year."

And to be fair, he was telling them in a state where anyone who tried to do so would probably be arrested, or at least stared down. He told his crowd of supporters to do that because - he said - the votes would not be properly counted. His line throughout this campaign has been that the system is skewed against him and that he would be cheated out of a win.
The line would sound shocking if it weren't vintage Trump. The candidate for president has said he will decide on the day whether to accept the results of the actual election. But curiously, the call to "re-vote" is not as crazy as it sounds.
There are seven US states in which the practice is perfectly legal. In Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Mississippi, New York and Connecticut. If you have a change of heart, you can go back and do it again.
There are some restrictions. In Minnesota, it must be done by the week before. In Wisconsin you can only (only) go three times. In Pennsylvania you can change right up to election day itself - but you have to do so in person.
Few people make use of this curious loophole, but Donald Trump wants to exploit it to the full - telling Democrats who already voted for Clinton before the FBI reinvestigation to "go back and vote again".  Presumably he has thought through the ramifications.
It works both ways after all.
Emily Maitlis is presenting BBC Newsnight's coverage of the US presidential election. You can follow her on Twitter and watch more of her reports here,
The graduate job market has recovered to its pre-recession peak, with a 12% rise in the number of jobs for university leavers, a report says.
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The first time I heard Donald Trump in Colorado call on voters who had already voted to go back and vote again, I nearly fell off my chair.