The Bank of America Corp. announced Thursday that they would be shortening their workforce by over 30,000 positions by 2011. This announcement just over two months after Bank of America’s acquisition of Merrill Lynch during the rockiest part of our current economic situation.

This isn’t unexpected. Citigroup announced in November that they would be cutting worldwide jobs by approximately 75,000 over the next year. Washington Mutual called in much smaller numbers, at an estimate of 9,000 job cuts.

With approximately 250,000 employees, this represents about 12% of the Bank’s population.

Bank of America remains one of the stronger banks, retaining limited levels of profitability over the past quarter. Many banks are reporting large losses, in the range of billions of dollars for the quarter.

A Fed report released Thursday, shows that the financial industry may be showing signs of recovery. Short-term analysis shows small decreases in the amount of emergency money being borrowed by financial institutions over the last week.

The emergency fund was created as a protection against the similar runs which occurred back in March. The specific companies who borrow from the fund are not included in the report, presumably to try to prevent further runs and irrational consumer behavior.

“The [staff] reductions are designed to eliminate redundancies created as a result of the merger with Merrill Lynch and to reflect the current recessionary environment,” wrote the Bank of America.

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