diff --git a/meta/conf/bitbake.conf b/meta/conf/bitbake.conf
index e201b671bb..131ba296d3 100644
--- a/meta/conf/bitbake.conf
+++ b/meta/conf/bitbake.conf
@@ -795,7 +795,7 @@ BB_NUMBER_THREADS ?= "${@oe.utils.cpu_count()}"
 PARALLEL_MAKE ?= "-j ${@oe.utils.cpu_count()}"
 
 # Default parallelism and resource usage for xz
-XZ_DEFAULTS ?= "--memlimit=50% --threads=${@oe.utils.cpu_count()}"
+XZ_DEFAULTS ?= "--memlimit=50% --threads=${@oe.utils.cpu_count(at_least=2)}"
 
 ##################################################################
 # Magic Cookie for SANITY CHECK