General Motors is not out of the woods just yet.

Despite having been bailed out by the government from bankruptcy, the car manufacturer is still looking for ways to become a more efficient company and one of the ways it plans on being one is by eliminating 4,000 jobs by October 1.

After coming so close being shut down, GM is looking at laying off all these employees as a way to cut costs while they try to recover from the worst economic beatdown the company has experienced in its history.

According to GM spokesman Tom Wilkinson, the company has already addressed its employees of the pending lay-off and is looking for volunteers to give up their jobs – with a promise that they will be offered retirement and buyout incentives. In the event that GM doesn’t get enough volunteers by August, the company will be forced to make involuntary lay-offs, as to which, Wilkinson said is a ‘last case scenario’.

“GM is offering enhanced benefits to employees who volunteer to retire,” Wilkinson said. “Those not eligible to retire who volunteer to leave will get as much as six months’ severance, or as much as a year for executives.” he added.

Continued after the jump.

The warning signs of a mass lay-off at GM have been written on the wall since early this year, when the company announced that they would reduce their workforce from 29,650 at the start of 2009, to around 23, 500.

The rank-and-file aren’t the only ones that could end up losing their jobs, either. GM is also looking at slashing the executive ranks by as much as 35%, cutting it from 1,300 at the start of the year to around 850.

While GM has greatly benefited from the massive bailout from the US government, it’s beginning to look more and more likely that the company still has a lot of cleaning up to do.