SYDNEY - Australian job advertisements in newspapers and on the Internet rose strongly in November, another sign of an economic pick up that could foreshadow an upbeat official employment report later in the week.

A survey by Australia and New Zealand Banking Group released on Monday showed total job advertisements climbed 5.2 percent in November, more than recovering a 1.7 percent dip in October.

Ads were down 34.2 percent on November last year, but 12.3 percent higher than their trough in July.

The number of job advertisements in major metropolitan newspapers jumped 8.3 percent, while those on the Internet rose 5.0 percent.

"The lift in newspaper job advertising is particularly encouraging, given that this sector tends to lead overall job advertising trends," said Warren Hogan, acting chief economist at ANZ.

"Employment growth is also now trending upwards, after contracting through the first half of 2009," he added.

"The unemployment rate appears to have stabilised in the high fives."

Official employment data is due on Thursday and analysts generally expect a rise of around 5,000 jobs, after two months of surprising strength.

The jobless rate is seen edging up to 5.9 percent, from 5.8 percent.

The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) raised rates to 3.75 percent last week, the third rise in as many months, saying an ultra-loose policy was no longer needed now the economy was recovering.

The central bank noted that the unemployment rate was likely to peak at a much lower level than feared earlier in the year.

The government, and many analysts, had thought the jobless rate could top 8 percent in 2010.

Now after several months of resilience, analysts suspect unemployment might not rise much over 6 percent.

A Reuters poll of 20 economists on Friday produced a median forecast of 6.3 percent for the peak in the jobless rate.

Overall, job advertisements numbered 140,658 per week on average in November, with 9,530 in newspapers and the rest on the Internet.

In trend terms, the number of newspaper job advertisements grew by 2.3 percent in November, their sixth consecutive month of trend growth.