diff --git a/src/runtime/object.cpp b/src/runtime/object.cpp
index 80c9735268..a3be15ffe9 100644
--- a/src/runtime/object.cpp
+++ b/src/runtime/object.cpp
@@ -754,14 +754,25 @@ class task_manager {
             unique_lock<mutex> lock(m_mutex);
             m_idle_std_workers++;
             while (true) {
-                if (m_queues_size == 0 && m_shutting_down) {
-                    break;
+                if (m_queues_size == 0) {
+                    if (m_shutting_down) {
+                        // We're done
+                        break;
+                    }
+                    // Wait for new tasks
+                    m_queue_cv.wait(lock);
+                    continue;
                 }
-                if (m_queues_size == 0 ||
-                        // If we have reached the maximum number of standard workers (because the
-                        // maximum was decreased by `task_get`), wait for someone else to become
-                        // idle before picking up new work.
-                        m_std_workers.size() - m_idle_std_workers >= m_max_std_workers) {
+
+                // There's work to be done.
+                // If we have reached the maximum number of standard workers (because the
+                // maximum was decreased by `task_get`), wait for someone else to become
+                // idle before picking up new work.
+                // But during shutdown, we skip this throttling:
+                // because the finalizer might have called m_queue_cv.notify_all() for the last
+                // time, we don't want to get stuck behind the wait(). 
+                if (!m_shutting_down &&
+                    m_std_workers.size() - m_idle_std_workers >= m_max_std_workers) {
                     m_queue_cv.wait(lock);
                     continue;
                 }