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CONFINTEA V, the Fifth International Conference on Adult Education (report indexed at TD/INT 59.65) was held in Hamburg in 1997. The aim of the conference was to emphasise the importance of adult learning and to encourage international commitment to adult and continuing education in the perspective of lifelong learning. The broad and complex issue of adult learning was considered under 10 themes. In 2003, the CONFINTEA Mid-term Review Conference (synthesis report indexed at TD/TNC 78.108) was convened to review developments in adult learning and the commitments that had been made at CONFINTEA V. A workshop was held at the conference to examine theme five, 'Adult learning and the changing world of work'. This document is one of the papers presented at the workshop. The author suggests that in developing countries, work-oriented adult learning must invariably have a link with basic education and basic skills training because people living in poor areas have the lowest level of schooling. He highlights the following as some of the emerging priorities in this area: provision of secondary education programs in disadvantaged areas that include work components within the curricula; compensating for educational deficits within the curricula of training programs; developing proper strategies to address the diverse training needs of people working in the informal sector; linking formal and non-formal programs to foster mobility to higher levels of education and training; relating educational programs in rural areas to the needs of, and productive opportunities in these areas; and incorporating people's specific needs such as literacy, health, recreation, culture, the environment and personal development into the curricula of non-formal vocational programs. The paper concludes with a number of recommendations.