diff --git a/scripts/lib/vitest-local-scheduling.mts b/scripts/lib/vitest-local-scheduling.mts
index beaa44b396f0..d49460c52bec 100644
--- a/scripts/lib/vitest-local-scheduling.mts
+++ b/scripts/lib/vitest-local-scheduling.mts
@@ -234,13 +234,13 @@ export function resolveLocalVitestScheduling(
   }
 
   if (loadRatio >= 0.75) {
-    const loadWorkers = Math.max(2, Math.ceil(inferred * 0.75));
+    const loadWorkers = Math.ceil(inferred * 0.75);
     const maxWorkers =
       memoryPressureLimit === null ? loadWorkers : Math.min(loadWorkers, memoryPressureLimit);
     return {
       maxWorkers,
       fileParallelism: maxWorkers > 1,
-      throttledBySystem: maxWorkers < inferred || maxWorkers < loadWorkers,
+      throttledBySystem: maxWorkers < inferred || memoryPressureLimit === 1,
     };
   }
 
diff --git a/test/scripts/vitest-local-scheduling.test.ts b/test/scripts/vitest-local-scheduling.test.ts
index 18bd77dced97..508cdce39b45 100644
--- a/test/scripts/vitest-local-scheduling.test.ts
+++ b/test/scripts/vitest-local-scheduling.test.ts
@@ -65,6 +65,20 @@ describe("vitest scheduling host snapshot", () => {
 
 describe("local Vitest scheduling", () => {
   it.each([
+    [
+      "does not raise a single-core inferred budget under moderate load",
+      { cpuCount: 1, loadAverage1m: 0.75 },
+      {},
+      1,
+      false,
+    ],
+    [
+      "does not raise a four-core inferred budget under moderate load",
+      { cpuCount: 4, totalMemoryBytes: 16 * 1024 ** 3, loadAverage1m: 3 },
+      {},
+      1,
+      false,
+    ],
     [
       "caps total memory by the process constraint",
       { constrainedMemoryBytes: 16 * 1024 ** 3 },