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This paper addresses the construction of statistical knowledge on precarious employment in the French civil service, based on the annual statistical reports published by the French government administration between 1976 and 2017. It shows that the most precarious forms of public employment are not easily identified and counted, a process that depends on gradual improvement of the statistical instruments for measuring the civil service workforce, but also on the identification and counting conventions used. The growing number and share of precarious workers in the different levels of the administration was an important social and political issue for civil servants’ unions and for the State as employer for decades, until the system of public employment was profoundly transformed; hiring non-tenured employees is now common practice.