Chamath predicted that the COVID shock would not leave the U.S. with a large, permanent unemployed class, and that employment would broadly recover as capital remained available and firms invested and hired.

What happened:

• The unemployment rate spiked to 14.7% in April 2020 but then fell steadily, returning to the pre‑pandemic 3.5% level by July 2022; through 2023–2025 it has mostly been in the 3.5–4.5% range (about 4.3–4.4% in late 2025), still historically consistent with a tight labor market rather than mass permanent unemployment. (en.wikipedia.org)
• Prime‑age (25–54) labor force participation, a key measure of whether working‑age people are employed or actively looking for work, fully recovered to its pre‑pandemic level by May 2023 and has since hovered around or slightly above that level into 2024–2025. (bls.gov)
• Job openings and hiring reached record highs in 2021–2022, with unprecedented levels of vacancies and quits, reflecting very strong labor demand as companies expanded after the pandemic. (bls.gov)
• Policymakers such as Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen have explicitly argued that aggressive fiscal support helped avoid long‑term unemployment and economic “scarring,” and that the post‑pandemic labor market is one of the strongest in decades. (reuters.com)

There are ongoing structural issues—such as a decades‑long rise in nonparticipation among some groups of men and somewhat lower participation among older workers—but these are continuations of pre‑COVID trends, not a new, much larger “permanent unemployed class” created by the pandemic. (frbsf.org)

Given that core employment measures have not only recovered but in some respects exceeded pre‑COVID levels, and that unemployment has remained relatively low in the early–mid‑2020s, Chamath’s prediction that the U.S. would avoid a lasting, structurally large class of permanently unemployed people has been borne out.