diff --git a/pkgs/desktops/gnome-3/core/empathy/default.nix b/pkgs/desktops/gnome-3/core/empathy/default.nix
index 5e4bbf8cce1..6c45802a775 100644
--- a/pkgs/desktops/gnome-3/core/empathy/default.nix
+++ b/pkgs/desktops/gnome-3/core/empathy/default.nix
@@ -45,6 +45,8 @@ stdenv.mkDerivation rec {
     cheese libgudev
   ];
 
+  enableParallelBuilding = true;
+
   LC_ALL = "en_US.UTF-8";
 
   passthru = {