Businesses across the country are slowly starting to hire people once again, and one bank is looking to help smaller businesses out in order to spur job creation.

Bank of America recently announced that it will provide $10 million in grants to nonprofit lenders to leverage funds from the Small Business Administration (SBA) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) for lending to small businesses.

The grants are expected to be used by small businesses as loan loss reserves, allowing companies to hire new employees during the economic recovery. The new microloan reserve grants that Bank of America is offering were created to help nonprofit lenders meet the required reserve levels.

"Helping strengthen small businesses and new start-up companies stimulates job creation and is critical to our nation’s economic recovery," said David Darnell, president of Global Commericial Banking of Bank of America. "Bank of America is empowering entrepreneurs by directing private sector capital to unlock exponentially greater amounts of federal dollars for their businesses."


The average SBA microloan size is about $13,000 per business, according to the SBA. As of 2005, small businesses represent 99.7% of businesses in the U.S., according to the SBA, and employ more than 55 million people.