Ensuring attractive academic careers is high on the international policy agenda. Favourable working conditions is important both to retain the best talents and to ensure the quality, performance, and competitiveness of academic research. In Norway, as in many other western countries there is an ongoing discussion about precarious working conditions and temporary employment in the higher education sector as a major hampering factor for recruiting and retaining talents to an academic career. Effective measures to cope with the problem of temporary contracts are dependent on increased knowledge, and this article aim to provide knowledge on how different sources of funding influence employment, and how immigration status relates to temporary positions. We use data from Statistics Norway’s unique register of research personnel with data on all researchers in the higher education sector where data on employment have recently been added and we connect this with information on immigration status.