A sweatshop is a workplace where workers are employed at low wages and under unhealthy or oppressive conditions. The US Department of Labor defines a sweatshop as a factory that violates two or more labor laws. Sweatshops often involve poverty-level wages, excessive hours of labor, and unsafe or unhealthful workplace conditions. Certain social and economic conditions are necessary for sweatshops to be possible, including a mass of unskilled and unorganized laborers, management systems that neglect the human factor of labor, and lack of accountability for poor working conditions or failure of governments to intervene on behalf of workers.

The phrase "sweatshop" was coined in 1850 to describe a factory or workshop where workers are treated unfairly, for example having low wages, working long hours, and in poor conditions. Since then, sweatshops have been a persistent problem in many countries around the world. While trade unions, minimum wage laws, fire safety codes, and labor laws have made sweatshops rarer in the developed world, they still exist and are increasingly associated with factories in the developing world.

Sweatshops have been common in the manufacturing of shoes, soap, cigars, and artificial flowers. Conditions have tended to be worse in large cities, where sweatshops can be hidden in slum areas. Although legislation had by the middle of the 20th century controlled sweatshops in most developed countries, the system was not eliminated. Understanding why sweatshops persist today means exploring issues of global competition, government regulation, immigration, business practices, and racial, ethnic, and gender discrimination.