ALBANY — Layoffs could be back on the table if tax collections take another dive, Gov. Paterson warned yesterday in an interview with The Post.

“If we [see] another serious downturn in revenues like the ones we’ve experienced in the last 18 months, you would have to go back and talk to those unions about the workforce,” Paterson said.

“If the situation [becomes] dire enough, it’s something that you have to go back and revisit.”

This is the first time the governor has raised the specter of job cuts since the Legislature passed a gap-closing plan on Dec. 1.

That plan fell hundreds of millions of dollars short of closing the state’s yawning budget gap.

Paterson threatened last March to pink-slip as many as 8,900 state workers, but agreed to skip layoffs after labor unions accepted a buyout deal and a less generous pension system for new workers.