Version on 3 rd of October 2011 Temps “by choice”? An Analysis of reasons for temporary employment among young European workers. Paper presented at ESRC seminar “Young workers and precarious employment”, September 23 rd , 2011, University of Warwick Imanol Nunez 1 and Ilias Livanos 2 Abstract This paper uses data on over 200,000 young (aged 20-35) temporary employees across Europe (EU-15) in order to investigate the factors leading to different types of temporary employment. Signing a temporary contract is likely to depend upon various social, cultural and political characteristics, thus it is particularly interesting to investigate this at such a diverse environment as the European Union. Four possible reasons are examined and interpreted in the light of different labour economics theories. These include temporary employment as: a) signal; b) screening mechanism; c) flexible contract; and d) friction of the labour market. For the empirical analysis, micro-data from the European Labour Force Survey are utilized. Personal and socio- economic characteristics, along with national and institutional factors driving each type of temporary employment are identified and scrutinised. Our findings show that temporary employment is segmented into two broad groups; precarious temporaries and temporaries “by choice”. 1 Lecturer, Universidad Publica de Navarra, Pamplona, Spain 2 Corresponding author, Research Fellow, Institute for Employment Research, University of Warwick, Ilias.Livanos@warwick.ac.uk