This text examines the situation of young workers hired by temporary work agencies. It is based on the results of semi-directed interviews with 40 young people in the Quebec City region. Our findings show that young workers who have recourse to these agencies are highly educated, have low incomes and contain high proportions of immigrants and students. Heterogeneity is a strong characteristic of this category of workers. The intermittence of the work and the «jerky temporality» are abiding features of their career path in this segment of the labour market. The young temp workers interviewed have diverse and heterogeneous views of their working conditions. The intermediation function of temp agencies, which connect employers looking for labour to job-seekers, is identified as the main advantage of the recourse to agencies. As for the inconveniences, they concern mainly the uncertainties which ensue from temporary work. Altogether, we note an «optimistic» positioning of young people with regard to recourse to temp agencies: a result of several factors pertaining to the local labour market context, but also of increased individualism and acceptance by this age group of the post-fordist work model.