In this article we use comparative micro data for 15 European countries covering the period 1992-2007 to study the impact of labor market reforms on the skill-related individual risk of holding a temporary contract and the risk of being unemployed. Our results indicate no general increase in either of these skill gaps. Using two-step multilevel analyses, we show that in the case of high protection of regular contracts, lowering restrictions on the use of temporary contracts increases the relative temporary employment rates of low-skilled workers. However, this kind of partial deregulation, which has been implemented in the majority of Western European countries, has not translated into decreasing unemployment risks of the low-skilled vis-a-vis medium- and highly-skilled persons.