Poland stands out in international comparisons as a country where leaving the parental home is remarkably delayed. There are many economic and institutional factors which contribute to postponement of residential independence among youth, such as housing shortages, limited availability of rental housing and limited social assistance for young people. However, there is little discussion in public debate about re-designing social policy support for youth or improving the situation on the housing market. What attracts attention instead is the role of flexibilisation of contractual arrangements on the Polish labour market. In media discourse, fixed-term contracts have been labelled as “trash contracts” and all the problems that young people in Poland face when making the transition to adulthood have been attributed to the spread of this specific employment form. This article aims to find out whether fixed-term contracts do indeed hinder residential independence of youth. Models of leaving the parental home are estimated based on panel data from EU-SILC. The results show no significant negative impact of temporary employment on the probability of establishing one’s own household among youth. What matters is whether young people have jobs at all, whereas the type of contract that they receive from employers seems to be of little importance
