To survive and thrive in a Minecraft world, you need food, items, shelter, and a variety of tables to upgrade tools. Fortunately, all of these can be provided by a single in-game mob. Yeah, we are talking about Minecraft villagers. These passive mobs are your best friends, thanks to trading and items each of them spawns with. But not all villagers are made equal. That’s why, in this article, we explain all the Minecraft villager jobs in the simplest way.
Our descriptions here will help you discover the best type of villagers across all the Minecraft biomes. And since villagers haven’t changed much for a while, these jobs stay true, even with the newest Minecraft 1.20 update. So, all you need to do is find a village in Minecraft and start interacting with the villagers. With that out of the gate, let’s understand all Minecraft villager jobs without further delay.
How Do Villagers Get their Jobs in Minecraft
Before we look at the common villager jobs in Minecraft, it is important to know how they are assigned these job roles. 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, it will automatically attain a farmer’s profession. But as you can expect, due to limited utility blocks, many villagers are also jobless.
Though, 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 will automatically make the villager opt for the profession connected to that block. Then, you can trade for completely unique items with the same villager. To keep things easy, we have included crafting recipes for each job site block along with each Minecraft villager job’s description.
How Many Villager Jobs Are There in Minecraft
Including the unemployed, there are 15 villager jobs in Minecraft. Out of these, only 13 are practical professions. But these villagers’ appearance can vary depending on which biome they spawn in. Furthermore, there are also hostile variants of villagers, including zombie villagers, witches, and more. So, overall you can find 100+ different-looking villagers in the game. However, we will only focus on the 15 different types of workers in this guide.
A Complete List of Minecraft Villager Jobs (2023)
The villager jobs stay the same in both Minecraft Java and Bedrock editions. You can use the table below to discover the job that interests you the most, along with the craftable blocks that the villagers use to perform their job.
1. Armorer
Job Site Block: Blast Furnace
Job Brief: Trades iron, armor, and chain
Going alphabetically, the first job that villagers can have is that of an armorer. As the name suggests, an armorer is responsible for trading armor pieces. This villager job is centered around a blast furnace, which is used to melt ores in Minecraft. As for trading, you can get pieces of armor, a bell, and a shield from it. Not to forget, an expert-level armorer can even provide you with enchanted diamond armor pieces.
2. Butcher
Job Site Block: Smoker
Job Brief: Offers cooked meat and stew
The butcher is responsible for providing cooked meat and rabbit stew. At times, it even offers 8 cooked chicken pieces for a single emerald. And if you are unable to find other food items, butchers are the most reliable source of food in the game. The utility block of a butcher is the smoker. You can use this table for cooking meat in the game faster than a regular furnace.
3. Cartographer
Job Site Block: Cartography Table
Job Brief: Trades maps, frames, and banners
Cartographers, at times, can be the “most expensive villagers” in the game. But the help they provide is worth it. For starters, you can get empty maps, frames, and banners from them. That’s not all, though. They also provide ocean and woodland explorer maps. You can use the specialized maps to find ocean monuments, woodland mansions, and buried treasure in the game. The job site or utility block for this job is a cartography table. It is mainly used to create maps in the game.
4. Cleric
Job Site Block: Brewing Stand
Job Brief: Offers magical items, Redstone dust, and even Bottle o’ Enchanting
Clerics provide rare magical items in Minecraft. Among all the Minecraft villager jobs, trading with clerics usually leads you to get the most interesting items. You can get Redstone dust, lapis lazuli, glowstone, ender pearls, and even Bottle o’ Enchanting from the clerics. 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 in Minecraft. Our guide linked here will help you get started in no time.
5. Farmer – Most Popular of All Minecraft Villager Jobs
Job Site Block: Composter
Job Brief: Offers high-level food items and ingredients
You cannot talk about villagers or Minecraft 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. That means you can trade bread, pie, apple, cookies, cake, and stew at lower levels. Meanwhile, expert farmers also offer golden carrots and glistering melon slices. They usually spawn next to a composter, which is great for creating bonemeal in the game.
6. Fisherman
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 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. Even if you aren’t a fan of fishing, a fisherman allows you to trade fish for emeralds which you can use with villagers having other Minecraft jobs. Their utility block is a barrel, which is great for storing items.
7. Fletcher – Rarest of All Minecraft Villager Jobs
Job Site Block: Fletching Table
Job Brief: Trades arrows, flint, bow, and crossbows
Fletcher is one of the least known villager jobs in Minecraft. But, if you have a good aim, they can be your biggest asset. You can get arrows, flint, bow, and crossbows from low-level fletchers. Meanwhile, upper-level fletchers provide enchanted bows, enchanted crossbows, and even tipped arrows. Unfortunately, their job site block is a fletching table, which doesn’t serve any secondary function. We can only hope for Minecraft to allow us to use it in the future.
8. Leatherworker
Job Site Block: Cauldron
Job Brief: Trades leather armor, horse armor, and saddle
Once popular, leatherworkers nowadays are not considered as useful as they once were in earlier Minecraft versions. That’s because they mostly offer leather armor pieces and leather horse armor. Neither of these is used by most players. The only useful item you can get from them is a horse saddle, but that too is only from a master-level leatherworker. However, their job site block is a cauldron, and it is really useful. You can store water, lava, or powder snow inside a cauldron. If you are on the Bedrock edition, it even allows you to store dyed water and potions.
9. Librarian
Job Site Block: Lectern
Job Brief: Offers enchanted books, 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. 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 as a redstone component. It enables you to place books on it so that multiple players can read it at the same time.
10. Mason or Stone Mason
Job Site Block: Stonecutter
Job Brief: Trades different types of bricks, terracotta, and quartz
Our next entry to Minecraft village jobs is the only one with multiple names. This profession is called mason in Minecraft Java edition and 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.
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.
11. Nitwit – Least Liked Minecraft Villager Job
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 that 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.
12. Shepherd
Job Site Block: Loom
Job Brief: Offer decorative items like colored wool, carpets, and paintings
Unlike the real world, the job of a shepherd is one of the few non-survival-oriented Minecraft villager jobs. 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 shepherd only for the paintings. The job site block of the shepherd is much more interesting than the job itself. You can use the loom to create unique patterns on banners with an intriguing in-game editor.
13. Toolsmith
Job Site Block: Smithing Table
Job Brief: Trades tools like pickaxe, shovel, and hoe
As you might guess, you can trade with toolsmiths to obtain various in-game tools, including pickaxe, axe, shovel, and hoe. You can even get enchanted tools at higher levels of trading. Additionally, at times, toolsmiths also offer bells while trading. 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 also how to get netherite upgrade.
14. Unemployed
Job Site Block: use any block (or table) to assign a job
Job Brief: can take up any 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 turn into an unemployed one. However, you can use this technique to reassign a villager to a different job and get different trades.
15. Weaponsmith – Most Desired of All Minecraft Villager Jobs
Job Site Block: Grindstone
Job Brief: Offers minerals, enchanted weapons, and bells
Finally, our Minecraft villager jobs list reaches its end with weaponsmith, which is the most desirable job. 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. 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.
Bonus: Wandering Trader
Wandering traders aren’t essentially 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 there is a way of spawning them. A wandering trader randomly spawns with 2 leashed trader llamas around the player after 1 in-game day has passed. They can spawn anywhere within a 48-block radius around your location. So, keep your eyes peeled. Also, they definitely despawn after a while, so you cannot keep them or their trades for too long.
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. And there’s no better place to get started than the best Minecraft village seeds. You can use these on Minecraft 1.17 and earlier versions to spawn directly into a variety of unique villagers. But if you’re playing in the newer versions of the game, you can instead check out some of the best Minecraft 1.20 seeds and best Minecraft 1.20 Bedrock seeds. Some of them spawn you close to a village.
Meanwhile, you only need emeralds for trading with villagers in most cases. You can use our Minecraft ore distribution guide to easily find emeralds in the game. If you know where to look, emeralds are easy to find. With that said, don’t forget to share your favorite villager job in Minecraft in the comments section. Let’s see how many of our readers have the same thought.
Frequently Asked Questions
There are a couple of reasons for this villager’s behavior. One of them is that the villager cannot find its path to the workstation block. Additionally, villagers work only during the work time during the day. That means early in the morning and late in the evening, they won’t try to work and won’t be assigned a new profession. One more reason can be the fact that some other 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 middle of the day.
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.
No, they cannot. Villagers can open and close regular doors, but not iron doors, trapdoors, gates or chests.
This is a helpful article. I made every profession in one village and expanded the village into a town. By making extra houses with beds only, I ended up with multiple of the same profession using only the one original job block. I love the Librarian for Enchanted Books (Mending I); and traded with others to earn Emeralds for these books.
I hate both nitwits and clerics
Villager do require a bed to get a job, but they don’t require sleeping. If a villager isn’t linked to a bed, it won’t take new jobs, unlink from it’s current job, or restock.
If a villager does
Not sleep it loses
It’s job
the fletcher and the Cleric r my absolute favourites cuz the Cleric trades Ender pearls which helps u when u r trying to speedrun Minecraft and the Fletcher cuz it trades emeralds for 32 sticks which is amazing
My favorite villager is either the cartographer, fisherman, or the librarian. I can’t pick between these villagers. I like the cartographer because you can get treasure maps from it and if you have a lot paper or a lot sugarcane near by you can get a lot of emeralds. I like the fisherman because you can get a lot of emeralds from it with fish which is easy to get a lot of. Then you can use those emeralds for better trades. And finally, I like the librarian because you can get enchanted books from it.
I like the villagers unique jobs, but the cartographer is one of my favorites because they are very useful for trading maps. I also like librarians because they are good for trading name tags, compasses, and enchanted books. This article has been really informative for me. I hope there will be more articles like this about minecraft and other app games. Thank you for the good info! 👍
honestly i like the nitwit. he don’t have a job, i don’t either. good stuff.
My favorite villager is the Fletcher! If you collect sticks for them they will offer emeralds so it makes a quick and easy grind in highly “wooded” areas. This makes getting emeralds quick and easy! i suggest having two+
None of this explains why when i put down a utility block (i’ve tried a composter, loom, smoker, and smithing table) it does the green sparkle thing then the angry smoke pops up like i’m doing something wrong or the villagers deny the jobs and idk why.
my fave villager is the librarian bc they give me mending a lot, when i see memes of “why cant i get mending” i always laugh bc they always give me mending, like 85% of the time
Mine is wandering trader. I like them Because they are the only villager type who can sell more that 5 items for 1 emerald.
My favorite villager is a cartographer. The reason is that the Cartographer has really good items like explorer maps which leads players towards woodland mansions and ocean monuments. Though, I enjoy trading with them more in Creative than in survival— they have so expensive prices that usually in survival, I can’t even trade a few empty maps with the cartagraphers before my emeralds started running out.