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A majority of the world's working people are in the informal economy. The ILO is giving increasing attention to the inter-related problems that they face. The informal economy often forms a key link in the production or distribution chain of major industries as suppliers, buyers or subcontractors. Despite their contributions to economies, owner-operators and workers in the informal economy, including homeworkers, street and market vendors and micro-enterprises, face difficult problems in increasing their incomes and well-being, and often work in substandard conditions, exposed to hazards in the workplace.
The ILO is developing programmes that build on its experiences of the Work Improvement in Small Enterprises (WISE) programmes, and applying these to different parts of the informal economy. These programmes are based on the understanding that poverty, vulnerability, low productivity, low profits and poor working conditions are interconnected, and on the idea that improvement in working conditions can be linked to workers' priority concerns, including improving family health and well-being, enhancing the level and regularity of earnings, and measures to improve work-related welfare facilities.
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