Gathering some statistics for all current LTS versions it seems something definitely changed: DO SLEEP(0.5) SELECT BUSY_TIME FROM information_schema.USER_STATISTICS WHERE USER="root" 10.6.0 : 0.501819 10.6.1 : 0.501053 10.6.2 : 0.501648 10.6.3 : 0.501604 10.6.4 : 0.501832 10.6.5 : 0.501544 10.6.7 : 0.501955 10.6.8 : 0.501876 10.6.9 : 0.501897 10.6.10 : 0.501433 10.6.11 : 0.501622 10.6.12 : 0.501835 10.6.13 : 0.501748 10.6.14 : 0.501707 10.6.15 : 0.501714 10.6.16 : 0.501779 10.6.17 : 0.501494 10.6.18 : 0.501867 10.6.19 : 0.502027 10.6.20 : 0.501747 10.6.21 : 0.501988 10.11.2 : 0.501824 10.11.3 : 0.501596 10.11.4 : 0.501717 10.11.5 : 0.501656 10.11.6 : 0.501781 10.11.7 : 0.501928 10.11.8 : 0.502130 10.11.9 : 0.501888 10.11.10 : 0.501705 10.11.11 : 501735.000000 11.4.2 : 0.500968 11.4.3 : 0.501843 11.4.4 : 0.501671 11.4.5 : 501860.000000