The result of this change in the GDR's economic direction was the rapid deterioration of workers' living standards, which lasted until the first half of 1953, and represented the first clear downward trend in the living standard of East Germans since the 1947 hunger crisis. Travel costs rose as generous state subsidies were cut, while many consumer goods began to disappear from store shelves. Factories were forced to clamp down on overtime: in the context of a now restricted budget, the wage bill was deemed excessively high. Meanwhile, food prices rose as a result of both the effects of the state's collectivization policy – 40% of the wealthier farmers in the GDR fled to the West, leaving over 750,000 hectares of otherwise productive land lying fallow – and a poor harvest in 1952. Workers' cost of living therefore rose, while the take-home pay of large numbers of workers – many of whom depended on overtime hours to make ends meet – was diminishing. In the winter of 1952–53, there were also serious interruptions to the supply of heat and electricity to East Germany's cities.

On 12 June, the next day, 5,000 people participated in a demonstration in front of Brandenburg-Görden Prison in Brandenburg an der Havel.

On 14 June, more confusion followed as an editorial in Neues Deutschland condemned the new work norms, yet in that very same issue, news articles praised workers who had exceeded the new norms in contradiction to the editorial.

On 15 June, workers at the Stalinallee "Block 40" site in East Berlin, now with their hopes raised about the possibility that the work norms would be rescinded, dispatched a delegation to East German Prime Minister Otto Grotewohl to deliver a petition calling for a revocation of the higher work norms. However, Grotewohl ignored the workers' demands.

And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand? After all, you knew ahead of time that those bluecaps were out at night for no good purpose. And you could be sure ahead of time that you’d be cracking the skull of a cutthroat.