How to give villagers jobs in Minecraft 1.19 update

Villages and villagers are one of Minecraft’s most complex features. The wiki page for villagers and trading is longer than pretty much any other page on the wiki, by a large margin.

Lots of this complexity comes from the different professions villagers can have and the different trades associated with each job.

Villager trading, the main use for villagers, is the single most powerful and important system in the game. Players can access things like enchanted diamond tools and armor and mending enchanting books. This means that knowing how to give villagers a job is very important.

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Setting up villagers with professions in Minecraft 1.19

Find a village

The first thing users will need to do before they can set any villager up with a profession is to find a village that contains villagers. Villages can only spawn in a handful of the game's many dozen biomes.

These biomes are deserts, plains, meadows, savannahs, snowy plains, taiga, and snowy taiga and sunflower plains, which are exclusive to the Bedrock Edition of the game.

Most of these biomes are flat and unwooded, making finding villages relatively easy.

Gamers can use horses to cover large amounts of ground quickly. If they are in the game's later stages, they could even use an elytra and firework rockets to cover even more ground in lesser time, making finding villages almost trivial.

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Place profession block

There are different professions in Minecraft, 13 to be exact. There is a block associated with each profession, all of which are craftable by players looking to trade with a specific kind of profession or set up a villager trading hall.

The list of available professions in Minecraft are: armorer (Blast furnace), butcher (Smoker), cartographer (Cartography Table), cleric (Brewing Stand), farmer (Composter), fisherman (Barrel), fletcher (Fletching Table), leatherworker (Cauldron), librarian (Lectern), mason (Stonecutter), shepherd (Loom), toolsmith (Smithing Table), and weaponsmith (Grindstone).

The block that matches each profession is found in parenthesis after the title.

Whenever a profession block is placed, a villager without a profession will detect it, head to it, and be assigned to it. After this, the villager will change into the outfit matching the profession.

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Lock in trades

An example of farmer trades (Image via Minecraft)

Once users have placed and broken the profession block they want until the villager is offering the trade they want, they will need to lock in the trade so that it does not reset.

Thankfully, locking in gamers is a simple process. They must make a single trade with the villager for any available trade, which will lock in all the villagers' trades, meaning they will not change.

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Watch out for nitwits

Two nitwits (Image via Reddit)

The biggest thing players should look out for when attempting to assign professions to their villagers is nitwits. These villagers cannot have professions, making them unable to ever trade with users, gain professions, or gather around a bell that is rung.

Additionally, they also go to bed later and wake up later than the rest of the villagers in the village.

Nitwits are easily distinguishable from other villagers, as their outfits are predominantly green in coloration, making them stand out quite a bit. Additionally, on Java Edition, when interacted with, nitwits will grunt and shake their heads at gamers.

These villagers are not useless, however, as they can still breed, so readers should use any potential nitwits in a villager breeder.