The Reserve Bank board will hold its nerve and keep interest rates steady today despite evidence pointing to a hiring freeze and a jump in unemployment.

ANZ's count of newspaper and internet job advertisements slipped a further 6.7 per cent in June to its lowest level since the take-up of internet advertising, making it roughly half its level of a year ago.

For interest rate, stamp duty and home loan calculators, click here

Newspaper job ads in The Age and the Herald Sun bounced back from earlier losses in June to finish roughly steady in the past five months and down 50 per cent on the year.

ANZ economist Warren Hogan believes that while employers have stopped hiring they are so far still "hoarding labour" and have yet to seriously shed staff.

"For the moment, population growth is driving the unemployment rate up rather than widespread job losses," he said. "The key to the future is whether this continues or whether labour shedding picks up."

Forecasters surveyed by Reuters expect 25,000 more jobs to have been lost when the official figures are released on Thursday which, combined with population growth, would push up the unemployment rate from 5.7 to 5.9 per cent. Most expect an unemployment rate of 7 per cent by December.

The Reserve Bank board will be unmoved by the outlook for Australian unemployment when it holds its monthly meeting in Sydney this morning, focusing instead on improving prospects for Australia's biggest export customer, China.

Since Reserve governor Glenn Stevens said in May that China's recovery was real, Reserve Bank staff have confirmed their view that China's increased demand for Australian raw materials reflects an economic rebound rather than speculative stockpiling. Australia's exports to China have hit record highs in each of the past three months, eclipsing exports to Japan.

The bank believes that while there might be an element of speculation to these purchases they are mainly driven by real and probably sustainable demand flowing from the Chinese Government's stimulus program.

The bank expects the International Monetary Fund to revise its outlook for China upwards when it reports tomorrow.

At home, the Reserve Bank is buoyed by confidence surveys suggesting a return to optimism among businesses and consumers and by some of the results from its business liaison program.

A Treasury report on its separate business liaison program finds conditions in the mining sector to be better than  expected and Australia's retail and construction sectors to be buoyant.

It finds manufacturing conditions to be mixed, with "those operating in the food and beverage sector or supplying lower-value retailers generally enjoying relatively benign conditions" and "those engaged in the production of consumer durables and business plant and equipment less sanguine".

But, the report says, even among heavy manufacturers "several contacts believed the bottom of the economic cycle may have been reached".

On jobs, the Treasury finds accounts of planned job cuts to be "less prevalent than in past months, with the outlook relatively steady among those firms contacted, subject to the economic outlook holding up".

Financial markets expect the Reserve Bank to keep rates on hold today for the third consecutive month but expect at least one further cut in the Reserve's 3 per cent cash rate this year.