DETROIT  More than 14,000 retirement-eligible hourly workers have elected to stay at the financially troubled automaker General Motors rather than leave with a buyout package worth up to $45,000.

G.M. said in a statement on Thursday that more than 7,500 members of the United Automobile Workers union who work in its factories had accepted the offers by this week’s deadline. Most of the workers will leave by April 1.

The number is more than double the projection of one analyst but illustrates the difficulty G.M. faces in trying to persuade workers to give up their jobs during a recession, even at a company perilously close to bankruptcy and after the U.A.W. agreed to reduced job-security provisions.

But G.M. needs many longtime workers to leave, so it can replace them with new hires earning half as much. The company has borrowed $13.4 billion from the federal government since December and is asking for $16.6 billion more. It must show President Obama’s auto industry task force by next Tuesday that it is making progress on cutting labor costs and other aspects of its restructuring plan.