diff --git a/mm/backing-dev.c b/mm/backing-dev.c
index 8ed2ffd963c53b..7340353f8aea08 100644
--- a/mm/backing-dev.c
+++ b/mm/backing-dev.c
@@ -957,8 +957,9 @@ EXPORT_SYMBOL(congestion_wait);
  * jiffies for either a BDI to exit congestion of the given @sync queue
  * or a write to complete.
  *
- * In the absence of zone congestion, cond_resched() is called to yield
- * the processor if necessary but otherwise does not sleep.
+ * In the absence of zone congestion, a short sleep or a cond_resched is
+ * performed to yield the processor and to allow other subsystems to make
+ * a forward progress.
  *
  * The return value is 0 if the sleep is for the full timeout. Otherwise,
  * it is the number of jiffies that were still remaining when the function
@@ -978,7 +979,19 @@ long wait_iff_congested(struct zone *zone, int sync, long timeout)
 	 */
 	if (atomic_read(&nr_wb_congested[sync]) == 0 ||
 	    !test_bit(ZONE_CONGESTED, &zone->flags)) {
-		cond_resched();
+
+		/*
+		 * Memory allocation/reclaim might be called from a WQ
+		 * context and the current implementation of the WQ
+		 * concurrency control doesn't recognize that a particular
+		 * WQ is congested if the worker thread is looping without
+		 * ever sleeping. Therefore we have to do a short sleep
+		 * here rather than calling cond_resched().
+		 */
+		if (current->flags & PF_WQ_WORKER)
+			schedule_timeout(1);
+		else
+			cond_resched();
 
 		/* In case we scheduled, work out time remaining */
 		ret = timeout - (jiffies - start);
diff --git a/mm/vmstat.c b/mm/vmstat.c
index 2ec34342a87bdf..0d5712b0206c7e 100644
--- a/mm/vmstat.c
+++ b/mm/vmstat.c
@@ -1379,6 +1379,7 @@ static const struct file_operations proc_vmstat_file_operations = {
 #endif /* CONFIG_PROC_FS */
 
 #ifdef CONFIG_SMP
+static struct workqueue_struct *vmstat_wq;
 static DEFINE_PER_CPU(struct delayed_work, vmstat_work);
 int sysctl_stat_interval __read_mostly = HZ;
 static cpumask_var_t cpu_stat_off;
@@ -1391,7 +1392,7 @@ static void vmstat_update(struct work_struct *w)
 		 * to occur in the future. Keep on running the
 		 * update worker thread.
 		 */
-		schedule_delayed_work_on(smp_processor_id(),
+		queue_delayed_work_on(smp_processor_id(), vmstat_wq,
 			this_cpu_ptr(&vmstat_work),
 			round_jiffies_relative(sysctl_stat_interval));
 	} else {
@@ -1460,7 +1461,7 @@ static void vmstat_shepherd(struct work_struct *w)
 		if (need_update(cpu) &&
 			cpumask_test_and_clear_cpu(cpu, cpu_stat_off))
 
-			schedule_delayed_work_on(cpu,
+			queue_delayed_work_on(cpu, vmstat_wq,
 				&per_cpu(vmstat_work, cpu), 0);
 
 	put_online_cpus();
@@ -1549,6 +1550,7 @@ static int __init setup_vmstat(void)
 
 	start_shepherd_timer();
 	cpu_notifier_register_done();
+	vmstat_wq = alloc_workqueue("vmstat", WQ_FREEZABLE|WQ_MEM_RECLAIM, 0);
 #endif
 #ifdef CONFIG_PROC_FS
 	proc_create("buddyinfo", S_IRUGO, NULL, &fragmentation_file_operations);