All the Minecraft Villager Jobs Explained

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 will 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 with even the Minecraft 1.18 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 the villagers’ appearance can vary depending upon the biome in which they spawn. Furthermore, there are also hostile variants of villagers, including zombie villagers, witches, and more. So, overall you can find 100+ different-looking villagers. However, we only need to focus on the 15 different types of workers in this guide.

Minecraft Villager Jobs Explained (2022)

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 eye, 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, stew at lower levels. Meanwhile, expert farmers 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 were 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 only useful in multiplayer mode. 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.

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.

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.

The Ultimate Guide to Minecraft Villager Jobs

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 have already updated your game, you can instead check out some of the best Minecraft 1.18 seeds. Most 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 1.18 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.