diff --git a/src/bin/pg_dump/pg_dump.c b/src/bin/pg_dump/pg_dump.c
index 058244cd171..41a51ec5cd8 100644
--- a/src/bin/pg_dump/pg_dump.c
+++ b/src/bin/pg_dump/pg_dump.c
@@ -721,6 +721,21 @@ main(int argc, char **argv)
 	if (archiveFormat == archNull)
 		plainText = 1;
 
+	/*
+	 * Custom and directory formats are compressed by default with gzip when
+	 * available, not the others.  If gzip is not available, no compression is
+	 * done by default.
+	 */
+	if ((archiveFormat == archCustom || archiveFormat == archDirectory) &&
+		!user_compression_defined)
+	{
+#ifdef HAVE_LIBZ
+		compression_algorithm_str = "gzip";
+#else
+		compression_algorithm_str = "none";
+#endif
+	}
+
 	/*
 	 * Compression options
 	 */
@@ -749,21 +764,6 @@ main(int argc, char **argv)
 		pg_log_warning("compression option \"%s\" is not currently supported by pg_dump",
 					   "workers");
 
-	/*
-	 * Custom and directory formats are compressed by default with gzip when
-	 * available, not the others.
-	 */
-	if ((archiveFormat == archCustom || archiveFormat == archDirectory) &&
-		!user_compression_defined)
-	{
-#ifdef HAVE_LIBZ
-		parse_compress_specification(PG_COMPRESSION_GZIP, NULL,
-									 &compression_spec);
-#else
-		/* Nothing to do in the default case */
-#endif
-	}
-
 	/*
 	 * If emitting an archive format, we always want to emit a DATABASE item,
 	 * in case --create is specified at pg_restore time.