All The Minecraft Villager Jobs Explained (2022) - Beebom

In Minecraft, villagers might look like simply nose-humming mobs with a huge appetite for Emeralds. But villagers offer one of the most powerful features in the entire game, which is trading. Every villager’s job, from farmers to librarians, can grant you exceptional tools like enchanted gear, weapons, armor, books, and more. That’s why, in this article, we explain all the Minecraft villager jobs in the simplest way. All you need to do is find a village in Minecraft and start interacting with the villagers. With that said, let’s begin!

All 15 Villager Professions & Their Job Site Blocks

In the table below, we have given a brief overview of all 15 villager professions along with their job site blocks and a few key trades that they offer (other than emeralds). Apart from these, you can also check our list of the best Minecraft villager trades for some rare items.

Villager Profession	Work Station	Key Trades
Librarian	Lectern	Bookshelves, enchanted books, lantern, glass, clock, compass, nametag
Armorer	Blast Furnace	Iron armor, diamond armor, shield, bell
Toolsmith	Smithing Table	Stone tools, Iron tools, diamond tools, bell
Weaponsmith	Grindstone	Iron weapons, diamond weapons
Butcher	Smoker	Raw chicken, porkchops, stews
Cartographer	Cartography Table	Treasure maps, item frames
Cleric	Cleric	Redstone powder, lapis lazuli, ender pearls, bottle o’ enchanting
Farmer	Composter	Bread, apple, pie, cake, golden carrot, glistening melon slice
Fisherman	Barrel	Campfire, raw cod, salmon, and fishing rods
Fletcher	Fletching Table	Arrow, flints, bows, crossbows
Leatherworker	Cauldron	Leather armor, horse armor, and more
Mason or Stone Mason	Stonecutter	Bricks, stone, terracotta blocks
Shepherd	Loom	Shears, paintings, carpets, wool
Nitwit	None	None
Unemployed	Any job site block will employ it	None

Deep Dive: Every Villager Job Explained

Villagers can automatically pick up jobs when you place a certain job site block in front of an unemployed villager. That said, here are all the Minecraft villager jobs that you can find:

Librarian – The King of Enchantments

• Job Site Block: Lectern
• Job Brief: Offers enchanted books, a compass, clocks, name tags, and more

If you know how to use enchanted books in Minecraft, you will love villagers with the librarian job in Minecraft. They are one of the easiest ways to get enchanted books in the game. But that’s not all. Here are the key trades for each level.

Level	Key Trades
Novice	Bookshelf, Encahnted Books
Apprentice	Lantern
Journeyman	Glass
Expert	Clock, Compass
Master	Nametag

You can also get bookshelves, lanterns, glass blocks, clocks, compasses, and even name tags from them. Their job site block is the lectern, which is useful in multiplayer mode and serves as a redstone component. It enables you to place books on it so that multiple players can read them simultaneously.

Armorer – Your Armor Hub

• Job Site Block: Blast Furnace
• Job Brief: Trades iron, armor, and chain

Going alphabetically, the first job that villagers in Minecraft can have is that of an armorer. As the name suggests, an armorer is responsible for trading armor pieces. This villager’s job is centered around a blast furnace used to melt ores. Below are the key trades for each level of this villager.

Level	Key Trades
Novice	Iron armor
Apprentice	Chainmail armor
Journeyman	Shield
Expert	Enchanted armor (bottom)
Master	Enchanted armor (top)

As for trading, you can get armor, a bell, and a shield from them. Not to forget, an expert-level armorer can even provide you with enchanted diamond armor pieces.

Toolsmith – Your Tools Hub

• Job Site Block: Smithing Table
• Job Brief: Trades tools like pickaxes, shovels, and hoes

As you might have guessed, you can trade with toolsmiths to obtain various tools, including an axe, pickaxe, shovel, and hoe in Minecraft. You can even get enchanted tools at higher levels of trading. Moreover, at times, toolsmiths also offer bells while trading.

Level	Key Trades
Novice	Stone tools
Apprentice	Bell
Journeyman	Enchanted iron tools
Expert	Enchanted diamond tools
Master	Enchanted diamond pickaxe

Not to forget, you can use the smithing table to upgrade diamond tools to netherite tools, making them the strongest tools in Minecraft. Moreover, you can make netherite armor and a netherite sword, so make sure to follow our linked guide on how to get netherite and netherite upgrades.

Weaponsmith – Your Weapons Hub

• Job Site Block: Grindstone
• Job Brief: Offers minerals, enchanted weapons, and bells

The weaponsmith is one of the most desirable jobs in Minecraft. If you are doing a speedrun in Minecraft, weaponsmith chests are even better than their trades. You can find obsidian, weapons, and iron in these chests. Here are the best trades for the weaponsmith.

Level	Key Trades
Novice	Enchanted iron sword
Apprentice	Bell
Journeyman	Emerald
Expert	Enchanted diamond axe
Master	Enchanted diamond sword

As for trading, they offer swords and axes, both with and without enchantments. You can also get a bell from them if you need it. Furthermore, you can use their grindstone to repair tools and weapons. It is also the most reliable tool to remove enchantments in Minecraft.

Butcher – Reliable Food Source

• Job Site Block: Smoker
• Job Brief: Offers cooked meat and stew

The butcher is responsible for providing cooked meat and rabbit stew. Sometimes, it even offers eight cooked chicken pieces for a single emerald. And if you cannot find other food items, butchers are the most reliable source of food in the game.

Level	Key Trades
Novice	Emerald
Apprentice	Cooked chicken, porkchop
Journeyman	Emerald
Expert	Emerald
Master	Emerald

The utility block of a butcher in Minecraft is the smoker. You can use this table to cook meat in the game faster than a regular Minecraft furnace.

Cartographer – Treasure Maps Expert

• Job Site Block: Cartography Table
• Job Brief: Trades maps, frames, and banners

Cartographers, at times, can be the “most expensive Minecraft NPC jobs” in the game. But the help they provide is worth it. You can get empty maps, frames, and banners from them. That’s not all, though. They also provide ocean, woodland, Savanna, Plains, Jungle, Trial Chambers explorer maps. Here are the best trades for each level of this villager.

Level	Key Trades
Novice	Empty map
Apprentice	Ocean explorer map
Journeyman	Trial explorer map
Expert	Item frames
Master	Globe banner pattern

You can use these specialized maps to locate ocean monuments, woodland mansions, and find buried treasure. The job site or utility block for this job is the cartography table. It is mainly used to create maps in the game.

Cleric – The Potion Master

• Job Site Block: Brewing Stand
• Job Brief: Offers magical items, Redstone dust, and even Bottle o’ Enchanting

Clerics provide you with rare magical items in Minecraft. Among all the different villager jobs, trading with clerics usually leads you to get the most interesting items. You can obtain Redstone dust, lapis lazuli, glowstone, ender pearls, and even a Bottle o’ Enchanting from the clerics.

Level	Key Trades
Novice	Redstone dust
Apprentice	Lapis lazuli
Journeyman	Glowstone
Expert	Ender pearl
Master	Bottle o’ Enchanting

And even if you don’t find a cleric in your village, you can easily assign a village this job by creating a brewing stand.

Farmer – Food Sources with Buffs

• Job Site Block: Composter
• Job Brief: Offers high-level food items and ingredients

You cannot talk about villagers or all villager jobs without focusing on farmers. They are the most popular and common types of villagers in the game. Farmers offer high-level food items and even a few ingredients to some of the best Minecraft potions. These are some of the best trades for the famer.

Level	Key Trades
Novice	Bread
Apprentice	Pumpkin pie
Journeyman	Cookie
Expert	Suspicious stew, Cake
Master	Golden Carrot, Glistering Melon

That means you can trade bread, pie, apple, cookies, cake, and stew at lower levels. Meanwhile, expert and Master farmers also offer suspicious stews, golden carrots, and glistering melon slices. They usually spawn next to a composter, which is great for creating bone meal in the game.

Fisherman – The Emerald Generator

• Job Site Block: Barrel
• Job Brief: Offers cooked seafood, campfire, and even an enchanted fishing rod

Fishermen are a comparatively newer addition to the game. In terms of fish, they offer you cooked salmon, cooked cod, and a bucket of cod, too. Beyond that, you can also get a campfire and an enchanted fishing rod from them.

Level	Key Trades
Novice	Cooked cod
Apprentice	Cooked salmon
Journeyman	Enchanted fishing rod
Expert	Emerald
Master	Emerald

Even if you aren’t a fan of fishing, a fisherman allows you to trade fish for emeralds, which you can use with villagers who have other Minecraft jobs. Their utility block is the barrel, which is great for storing items.

Fletcher – Source of Ranged Weapons

• Job Site Block: Fletching Table
• Job Brief: Trades arrows, flint, bow, and crossbows
• Most Valuable Trades: Enchanted Crossbows

Fletcher is one of the least-known villager jobs in Minecraft. But they can be your biggest asset if you have a good aim. You can get arrows, flint, bows, and crossbows from low-level fletchers. Meanwhile, upper-level fletchers provide enchanted bows, crossbows, and even tipped arrows.

Level	Key Trades
Novice	Flint
Apprentice	Bow
Journeyman	Crossbow
Expert	Enchanted bow
Master	Enchanted Crossbow

Also Read: Minecraft Mobs List : All New and Old Mobs

Unfortunately, their job site block is a fletching table, which doesn’t serve any secondary function. We can only hope Minecraft will allow us to use it in the future.

Leatherworker – Niche Utility of Armor

• Job Site Block: Cauldron
• Job Brief: Trades leather armor, horse armor, and saddles
• Most Valuable Trades: Emeralds and leather armor

Once popular, leatherworkers nowadays are not considered as useful as they once were in earlier Minecraft versions. That’s because they mostly offerleather armor pieces and leather horse armor, and most players use neither of these. The only useful item you can get from them is a horse saddle, but that, too, is only from a master-level leatherworker. Here are the best trades of a leatherworker.

Level	Key Trades
Novice	Leather armor
Apprentice	Leather armor
Journeyman	Leather armor, Emerald
Expert	Leather horse armor
Master	Leather armor

However, their job site block is a cauldron, and it is really useful. You can use the cauldron to store water, lava, or powder snow. If you are on the Bedrock edition, it even lets you store dyed water and potions.

Mason or Stone Mason – Builder’s Best Friend

• Job Site Block: Stonecutter
• Job Brief: Trades different types of bricks, terracotta, and quartz
• Most Valuable Trades: Glazed Terracotta

Our next entry in Minecraft village jobs is the only one with multiple names. This profession is called a mason in Minecraft Java edition and a stonemason in the Bedrock edition. The job of a mason is to provide a variety of stones. You can trade for different types of bricks, variants of polished stone blocks, and dripstone blocks at lower levels.

Level	Key Trades
Novice	Brick
Apprentice	Chiseled stone bricks
Journeyman	Polished stone variants
Expert	Colored Terracotta blocks
Master	Block of quartz

At higher levels, you can get colored terracotta, glazed terracotta, block of quartz, and quartz pillars too. Mason’s job site block, the stonecutter, is used to craft stone-related blocks in various sizes. You can make the most out of the stonecutter using the best Minecraft seeds to build cities.

Shepherd – Decorative Master

• Job Site Block: Loom
• Job Brief: Offer decorative items like colored wool, carpets, and paintings
• Most Valuable Trades: Emeralds, Banners

Unlike the real world, the shepherd’s job is one of the few non-survival-oriented villager jobs in Minecraft. They mostly offer decorative items like carpets, colored wool, banners, and paintings. However, you can get shears and beds from them too. Most players usually go to the shepherds only for the paintings.

Level	Key Trades
Novice	Shears
Apprentice	Wool
Journeyman	Beds
Expert	Banner
Master	Painting

The job site block of the shepherd is much more interesting than the job itself. You can use the loom to create unique banner patterns with an intriguing in-game editor.

Nitwit – The Black Sheep

• Job Site Block: N/A
• Job Brief: Aesthetic value, no other value

Not to hurt any player’s feelings, but nitwits in Minecraft are useless. You can’t trade or even assign a job to nitwits. Don’t confuse them with the unemployed villagers whom you can assign a job. The developers only included nitwits in the game as a healthy reminder of the aesthetic-only value that the Minecraft world holds for many.

Unemployed – The Base Villager

• Job Site Block: Use any block (or table) to assign a job
• Job Brief: Can take up any practical job on this list

Unemployed villagers are practically nitwits until you assign them a job. All baby villagers grow into unemployed villagers and remain the same until they find a job site block, which you can choose to craft and put in front of them. Additionally, if you break a job site block, an employed villager will become unemployed.

However, you can use this technique to reassign a villager to a different job and get different trades. Remember that once you trade with a villager at least once, you can no longer reset their trades.

Bonus Minecraft Job: Wandering Trader

Wandering traders aren’t necessarily villagers. But that’s only because they don’t spawn in a village. Other than that, they look and act like villagers, and you can even trade with them for unique items. Unlike villagers with specific items, the trading offers from a wandering trader are usually random. From packed ice to flowers, you can expect a diverse range of items from the trader.

Moreover, there is no way to turn a regular villager into a wandering trader. Neither is there a way of spawning them. A wandering trader randomly spawns with two leashed trader llamas around the player after one in-game day has passed. They can spawn anywhere within a 48-block radius around your location. So, keep your eyes peeled. Also, they despawn after a while, so you cannot keep them or their trades for too long.

How to Assign and Change Villager Jobs

The villagers’ jobs depend upon the utility block present around them. These blocks are also known as job site blocks. For example, if a villager has a composter nearby, they will automatically attain a farmer’s profession. But as you can expect, many villagers are also jobless due to limited utility blocks.

Although if you want to assign a particular profession to an unemployed villager, you can easily craft and place the required utility block near them. Doing so automatically makes the villager opt for the profession connected to that block. Then, you can trade for unique items with the same villager. Moreover, breaking this job site block will again remove the profession from the villager. You can then change the villager jobs again.

Dealing with Nitwits and Unemployed Villagers

Nitwits wear green robes and are useless for trading, as they do not have any trade options. You can not interact with them either. Moreover, these provide no value to your base, as placing a job site block will not even grant them a profession.

Here, the Unemployed villagers differ from the Nitwits as they can take up any job. These NPCs wear robes with respect to the biomes they are located in. Placing any job site block will then give those unemployed villagers a profession.

The 2026 Villager Trade Rebalance: What You Need to Know

Villagers have been discussed a lot recently, and Mojang is planning to modify their trades. You can try these potential changes by enabling the “Villager Trade Rebalance” experimental features in Java edition or the “Villager Trade Rebalancing” features in Bedrock edition while creating a new world.

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The thing that will be changed is how biomes will affect villager trades. This can include exclusive map trades, lowering of prices by the Wandering Traders, where all is based on the biomes. When these changes are officially added to the game, we’ll update this article, so you know exactly what they’re about.

Expert Tips for Maximum Trading Efficiency

Apart from Villager Trade Levels, the cost of the items in the stock is affected by factors like the current demand for the item and player reputation or popularity. For instance, when you buy a particular item till its stock ends, the next iteration will have increased pricing for the same item. Similarly, if an item goes unsold till the next stock arrives, the price will decrease for that.

Finally, there are instances where you can increase your popularity in Minecraft. This includes curing a Zombie villager or saving a village from a Bad Omen effect and ultimately a raid. Saving the village grants you the Hero of the Village achievement and gives you every item from each villager at a discounted price. Meanwhile, curing a villager will only apply the maximum discount on their stock after they have become professionals.

Now that you know every detail about all Minecraft villager jobs, you are more than ready to make the most out of your survival world. Meanwhile, you only need emeralds for trading with villagers in most cases. You can break emerald ores and get emeralds that way, or simply offer villagers something you don’t need, like sticks to a fletcher, which’ll earn you emeralds.

Minecraft Villager Trade Levels and Popularity

In Minecraft, there are five levels that a villager with a job can attain. Note that they unlock better trades as you level up the villagers. As such, a Master Armorer will have better items to offer, like diamond armor, rather than the Novice ones, who have emerald or iron armor to give you. With that, here are all the Villager Trade Levels in Minecraft:

Trade Level	Badge	Description
Novice	Stone	As soon as a villager gets assigned a job, it gets the Novice level.
Apprentice	Iron	A level higher than Novice and requires a total of 10 Villager Experience, giving access to better trades.
Journeyman	Gold	A level higher than Apprentice requires 70 Villager Experience, giving access to even better trades.
Expert	Emerald	A level higher than Journeyman and requires a total of 150 Villager Experience, giving access to the second-best trades.
Master	Diamond	A level higher than Expert requires 250 Villager Experience, giving access to the best-in-class trades.

And that wraps up our guide on all Minecraft villager jobs. Drop your favorite villager job in the comments sections below.

What block gives villagers jobs?

The designated Job Site Blocks are the only ones that can give villagers a profession or a job in Minecraft. These blocks include the Blast Furnace, Smoker, Cartography Table, Barrel, Composter, and so on.

Do villagers need a bed to get a job in Minecraft?

No, Villagers need a bed to spawn an iron golem, but not to work. They also restock their trades just fine, even if they don’t sleep.

Do anvils give villagers jobs?

No, anvils don’t give Villagers a job in Minecraft. Anvils can enchant your tools, weapons, or armor, repair them, and rename items using the Nametag.

Do grindstones give villagers jobs?

Yes, a Grindstone can work as a job site block, giving villagers the profession of a Weaponsmith. This will only work if another Weaponsmith does not claim the one you’re thinking of using in the village.

Why won’t my villager pick a job?

There are a couple of reasons for this behavior. One is that the villager cannot find their path to the workstation block. Additionally, villagers work only during work hours during the day. That means they won’t try to work early in the morning and late in the evening, and won’t be assigned a new profession. Another reason can be that a different villager is occupying that job site block, so the villager you want to assign the job cannot take it. Try to isolate all the other villagers outside of the room, and the chosen villager will soon take that job if it’s midday.

Can a villager switch jobs after being assigned one?

Yes, the Minecraft villagers can switch jobs if you break their original job site block and place a different one near them.

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