The Industrial Revolution led to a population increase. Industrial workers were better paid than those in agriculture. With more money, women ate better, had healthier babies, who were themselves better fed. Death rates declined, and the distribution of age in the population became more youthful. There was limited opportunity for education, and children were expected to work. Employers also liked that they could pay a child less than an adult.

Politicians and the government tried to limit child labour by law, but factory owners resisted; some felt that they were aiding the poor by giving their children money to buy food to avoid starvation, and others simply welcomed the cheap labour. In 1833, the first law against child labour, the Factory Act of 1833, was passed in England: Children younger than nine were not allowed to work, children were not permitted to work at night, and the work day of youth under the age of 18 was limited to twelve hours. Factory inspectors supervised the execution of the law. About ten years later, the employment of children and women in mining was forbidden. These laws decreased the number of child labourers; however, child labour remained in Europe up to the 20th century.

The rapid industrialisation of the English economy cost many craft workers their jobs. The textile industry in particular industrialized early, and many weavers found themselves suddenly unemployed since they could no longer compete with machines which only required relatively limited (and unskilled) labour to produce more cloth than a single weaver. Many such unemployed workers, weavers and others, turned their animosity towards the machines that had taken their jobs and began destroying factories and machinery. These attackers became known as Luddites, supposedly followers of Ned Ludd, a folklore figure. The first attacks of the Luddite movement began in 1811. The Luddites rapidly gained popularity, and the British government had to take drastic measures to protect industry.

Conditions for the working class had been bad for millennia. The Industrial Revolution, however, concentrated labour into mills, factories and mines, and this facilitated the organisation of trade unions to help advance the interests of working people. The power of a union could demand better terms by withdrawing all labour and causing a consequent cessation of production. Employers had to decide between giving in to the union demands at a cost to themselves or suffer the cost of the lost production. Skilled workers were hard to replace, and these were the first groups to successfully advance their conditions through this kind of bargaining.

The main method the unions used to effect change was strike action. Strikes were painful events for both sides, the unions and the management. The management was affected because strikes took their working force away for a long period of time; the unions had to deal the loss of income as well as with riot police and various middle class prejudices that striking workers were the same as criminals. The strikes often led to violent and bloody clashes between police or military and workers. Factory managers usually reluctantly gave in to various demands made by strikers, but the conflict was generally long standing.

In England, the Combination Act forbade workers to form any kind of trade union from 1799 until its repeal in 1824. Even after this, unions were still severely restricted.

In 1842, a General Strike involving cotton workers and colliers and organised through the Chartist movement stopped production across Great Britain.

The movement of people away from agriculture and into industrial cities brought great stresses to many people in the labor force. Women in households who had earned income from spinning found the new factories taking away their source of income. Traditional handloom weavers could no longer compete with the mechanized production of cloth. Skilled laborers sometimes lost their jobs as new machines replaced them.