SYDNEY (Bloomberg) - Australian job advertisements dropped in May by the most in two years as the nation’s employment growth slowed, a private report showed.Jobs advertised in newspapers and on the Internet fell 6.5 percent from April, when they declined a revised 0.4 percent, the first consecutive decreases since July 2009, according to an Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd. report released in Melbourne yesterday.“Newspaper job advertising has been soft across most of the states of Australia,” Warren Hogan, chief economist at ANZ Bank, said in a statement. “Recent stronger investment spending data in the first quarter combined with very robust investment intentions suggest to us that the labour market will strengthen later in the year as capital investment picks up.”Australia’s unemployment rate likely held at 4.9 percent in May, a government report will show on June 9, according to a Bloomberg survey of 25 economists, even as the economy had its weakest January-to-April job growth since 1999. Surging shipments of iron ore and coal to China are driving growth in Australia and boosting demand for workers, prompting economists to predict the central bank will raise rates next quarter.“With the unemployment rate below five percent and likely to remain that way or head lower over the next year, the Reserve Bank will maintain a strong tightening bias in its monetary policy,” Hogan said. “We expect a further 25-basis point increase in the RBA cash rate over the next three months in response to tightening labour market conditions and rising inflation pressures.”Twenty-three of 28 economists surveyed by Bloomberg predict RBA Governor Glenn Stevens will keep rates unchanged at 4.75 percent tomorrow when central bank policy makers meet. Five forecast an increase to five percent.National vacancies advertised in newspapers fell 2.7 percent in May, and Internet notices declined 6.6 percent, yesterday’s report showed.