A pick up in borrowering among households, businesses and the public sector prompted one research firm to forecast an uptick in mortgage lending-related jobs.

Challenger, Gray & Christmas released a study, showing lending to those three groups grew the most in five years during the last three months of 2012. 

“As lending grows, so does the need for people to manage the paperwork. More lending could also signal more economic activity to come, as households, businesses and governments put their loans to use,” said John Challenger, CEO of Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

Even though firms like JPMorgan Chase recently shed workers in the mortgage servicing space, Challenger expects growth in other areas of lending.

However, this new growth has yet to reach small and mid-sized businesses. Business owners of small to mid-sized businesses plan to delay hiring new employees or seeking new loans until the economy shows more signs of strength, PNC Financial (PNC) concluded in a recent economic outlook. 

Three out of four small and mid-sized businesses expect their staffing to remain unchanged for the next six months and nearly one out of three say they will do more work with fewer employees, PNC said.

Meanwhile, for the week ending March 30, initial jobless claims escalated by 28,000 filings to 385,000, according to the Department of Labor.

Additionally, the insured unemployment rate was 2.4% percent for the week ending March 23, unchanged from the prior week.

Overall, the outplacement company stated March job cuts were 30% higher than a year ago, which marks the second consecutive month and the fourth time in the last six months that the job-cut total was higher than the year-ago figure.

“The powerful engine of the U.S. economy is not firing on all cylinders, but there are sparks of optimism related to sales, profits and housing prices,” said Stuart Hoffman, chief economist at PNC. “These findings support our baseline forecast that the moderate U.S. economic and jobs expansion will persist in 2013.”