Australian business confidence improved in May, despite the number of job advertisements continuing to decline.

That is according to the National Australia Bank's monthly survey of companies, which witnessed its largest increase in eight years - rising 12-points to minus two.

However, a separate indicator of the country's employment situation also released today (June 9th) by the bank ANZ revealed that the number of advertised job vacancies declined by 0.2 per cent last month in comparison to April's figures.

Warren Hogan, head of Australian economics at ANZ, remained convinced that this data does not reflect the current labour market situation in the Asia-Pacific state.

He told Dow Jones: "ANZ is forecasting a 29,000 fall in employment with the release of the May labor force report on Thursday (June 11th)."

The national unemployment rate for May in Australia stood at 5.4 per cent of the working population.