diff --git a/CHANGELOG.md b/CHANGELOG.md
index 672a91301915..7f1ec601eed6 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -34,6 +34,7 @@ and this project adheres to [Semantic Versioning](https://semver.org/spec/v2.0.0
 
 ### Fixed
 
+- Fixed the lines order to get the right idle_worker in MultiGroupServer.F90
 - Add call to initialize pFlogger layer for the unit tests.
 - Rename `mpi_comm` to `comm` in `MAPL_HistoryGridComp.F90` to avoid GNU
   + MPT bug at NAS
diff --git a/pfio/MultiGroupServer.F90 b/pfio/MultiGroupServer.F90
index d9b188adeb11..9fe61430bb41 100644
--- a/pfio/MultiGroupServer.F90
+++ b/pfio/MultiGroupServer.F90
@@ -558,9 +558,9 @@ subroutine dispatch_work(collection_id, idleRank, num_idlePEs, FileName, rc)
           node_rank = maxloc(num_idlePEs, dim=1) - 1
           do i = 0, nwriter_per_node -1
             if (idleRank(node_rank,i) /= -1) then
+               idle_writer = idleRank(node_rank,i)
                idleRank(node_rank,i) = -1 ! set to -1 when it becomes busy
                num_idlePEs(node_rank) = num_idlePEs(node_rank)-1
-               idle_writer = idleRank(node_rank,i)
                exit
             end if
           enddo