diff --git a/changelog.html b/changelog.html
index 81faa6cd0f7842ad4bde92010c566a4dfefd710b..41af69dcd558292091a1d2225045808510e611c3 100644
--- a/changelog.html
+++ b/changelog.html
@@ -55,7 +55,9 @@ Upcoming changes</a>
 <!-- Record your changes in the trunk here. -->
 <div id="trunk" style="display:none"><!--=TRUNK-BEGIN=-->
 <ul class=image>
-  <li class=>
+  <li class=bug>
+    JUnit result archiver should only fail builds if there are really no results - i.e. also no skipped tests.
+    (<a href="https://issues.jenkins-ci.org/browse/JENKINS-7970">issue 7970</a>)
 </ul>
 </div><!--=TRUNK-END=-->
 
diff --git a/core/src/main/java/hudson/tasks/junit/JUnitResultArchiver.java b/core/src/main/java/hudson/tasks/junit/JUnitResultArchiver.java
index 294cd953131dd2825dc82a0e765ada23346fce7a..a2548bdc569ad1c8e0cbde2372936716d30c3361 100644
--- a/core/src/main/java/hudson/tasks/junit/JUnitResultArchiver.java
+++ b/core/src/main/java/hudson/tasks/junit/JUnitResultArchiver.java
@@ -57,7 +57,6 @@ import org.kohsuke.stapler.QueryParameter;
 import org.kohsuke.stapler.StaplerRequest;
 
 import java.io.IOException;
-import java.io.Serializable;
 import java.util.ArrayList;
 import java.util.Collection;
 import java.util.Collections;
@@ -139,8 +138,10 @@ public class JUnitResultArchiver extends Recorder implements MatrixAggregatable
 				throw new AbortException(Messages.JUnitResultArchiver_BadXML(testResults));
 			}
             result.freeze(action);
-			if (result.getPassCount() == 0 && result.getFailCount() == 0)
+			if (result.isEmpty()) {
+			    // most likely a configuration error in the job - e.g. false pattern to match the JUnit result files
 				throw new AbortException(Messages.JUnitResultArchiver_ResultIsEmpty());
+			}
 
             // TODO: Move into JUnitParser [BUG 3123310]
 			List<Data> data = new ArrayList<Data>();
diff --git a/core/src/main/java/hudson/tasks/junit/TestResult.java b/core/src/main/java/hudson/tasks/junit/TestResult.java
index a04467c9b0a370a181f32aa7308ffde49db3c33f..db934b8d8d2001935654abc09c8e748f92e5e142 100644
--- a/core/src/main/java/hudson/tasks/junit/TestResult.java
+++ b/core/src/main/java/hudson/tasks/junit/TestResult.java
@@ -377,6 +377,15 @@ public final class TestResult extends MetaTabulatedResult {
     public int getSkipCount() {
         return skippedTests;
     }
+    
+    /**
+     * Returns <tt>true</tt> if this doesn't have any any test results. 
+     * @since 1.511
+     */
+    @Exported(visibility=999)
+    public boolean isEmpty() {
+        return getTotalCount() == 0;
+    }
 
     @Override
     public List<CaseResult> getFailedTests() {