An Australian multimillionaire says he “deeply regrets” his comments at a property summit where he said unemployment should jump by up to 50% to create more productive workers.

Tim Gurner, CEO of real estate company the Gurner Group, was heavily criticised after complaining the COVID pandemic had changed employees’ work ethic.

The property developer is known for his controversial comments after hitting the headlines in 2017 when he stated millennials should not be buying smashed avocado or expensive lattes in their attempt to save up for their first home.

Speaking at a business forum in Sydney on Tuesday, he said “we need to see pain in the economy” and that unemployment should rise by 40-50% to adjust expectations.

“People decided they didn’t really want to work so much anymore through COVID,” he said.

“They have been paid a lot to do not too much in the last few years, and we need to see that change.”

He added: “We need to remind people that they work for the employer, not the other way around.”

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His comments were viewed more than 23 million times on X (formerly Twitter) after being posted by the Australian Financial Review.

After coming under fire from politicians and unions, Mr Gurner said on Thursday he “deeply regrets” his comments, acknowledging they were “deeply insensitive to employees, tradies and families across Australia who are affected by these cost of living pressures and job losses”.

Posting on employment-focused social media platform, LinkedIn, he said that while they are important conversations to have, his comments “were wrong”.

“I want to be clear: I do appreciate that when someone loses their job it has a profound impact on them and their families and I sincerely regret that my words did not convey empathy for those in that situation,” Mr Gurner wrote.

In the aftermath of Mr Gurner’s comments, US politician Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez shared the video to her own social media followers, pointing to a growing discrepancy between executive and employee pay.

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Listen and subscribe to The Ian King Business Podcast here.

“Reminder that major CEOs have skyrocketed their own pay so much that the ratio of CEO-to-worker pay is now at some of the highest levels ever recorded,” she wrote.

Latest data released on Thursday by the Australian Bureau of Statistics showed unemployment remained steady at 3.7%.

But the governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia, Michele Bullock, warned back in June the jobless rate would need to climb to 4.5% – implying about 140,000 job losses – to tame inflation, according to The Sydney Morning Herald.