Does entering the labour market via precarious employment have a long-term scarring effect on one’s career? Prior research proposes diverse arguments, but firm conclusions remain elusive. Using panel data from Hong Kong, this study rekindles this debate by revealing the long-lasting effect of first job precarity on workers’ subsequent career prospects. A comprehensive measure of precarious employment is constructed to simultaneously account for employment status, contractual status and occupational status, and random effects models are used to test the scarring effect of first job precarity on subsequent monthly income, job satisfaction and fringe benefits. It is also observed that macroeconomic situations, particularly periods of economic crisis, have a detrimental effect on entry into precarious employment. Importantly, the results show the substantial negative consequences of initial precarious employment, highlighting the adverse impact of economic crises on first job precarity and the subsequent scarring effect on career prospects.

Occupying public spaces can be an effective tactic for conveying a semantic message of protest and gaining wider support; however, it may also severely disrupt the everyday lives of non‐participants and causes a backfire. Therefore, it remains unclear whether and how the occupy movements have shifted political attitudes among the general public. Bringing a social‐spatial perspective to the case of the Occupy Central Movement (OCM) in Hong Kong, this study investigates how the attitudinal impact of occupation has varied according to people's spatial proximity to the protest sites. Using two waves of individual‐level panel data collected right before and after the OCM and detailed geo‐information on the respondents' home addresses and the occupied areas, we apply a difference‐in‐differences (DIDs) design to identify the causal link between space and attitudes. In addition, propensity score matching (PSM) methods are used to ensure the comparability of nearby and faraway residents. The results show that after the OCM, residents living near the occupied areas not only maintained their support for the pro‐democracy camp but also became more liberal as compared to faraway residents. This phenomenon can be explained by the “on‐site” effect, which suggests that the direct exposure to protestors' solidarity and the repressive actions of authorities arouse bystanders' sympathy for the protestors and support for their political cause. Such influence appears to be long‐lasting and can be evidenced by the local election results after the protest.