diff --git a/NEWS b/NEWS
index e79a6243059949bb3b5417a193ced900fbe49e7c..a8906aa0606f25b35fa18b3970df98571fa8ccdc 100644
--- a/NEWS
+++ b/NEWS
@@ -298,6 +298,7 @@ documents those changes that are of interest to users and administrators.
     Previously the scripts were based upon the original job size.
  -- Fix squeue to not limit the size of partition, burst_buffer, exec_host, or
     reason to 32 chars.
+ -- Fix potential packing error when packing a NULL slurmdb_clus_res_rec_t.
 
 * Changes in Slurm 16.05.9
 ==========================
diff --git a/src/common/slurmdb_pack.c b/src/common/slurmdb_pack.c
index 0e5307c4b3c3fd011f5ea9c1e447e343892f655d..3525b507947ddfb0a151b6fabebe735306506304 100644
--- a/src/common/slurmdb_pack.c
+++ b/src/common/slurmdb_pack.c
@@ -589,7 +589,7 @@ extern void slurmdb_pack_clus_res_rec(void *in, uint16_t protocol_version,
 
 	if (!object) {
 		packnull(buffer);
-		pack32(NO_VAL, buffer);
+		pack16((uint16_t)NO_VAL, buffer);
 		return;
 	}
 	packstr(object->cluster, buffer);