So far we have traded things: wood, bread, jewelry. Now for something that surprises most newcomers in the best way. You can trade people too. Workers are not only hired from your own town; they can be bought and sold between players on the People market. If you suddenly need a particular specialist and do not want to wait to train one, this is the fastest way to get the exact worker you need. And if you find yourself with spare labour sitting idle, this is how you turn those extra hands into ready cash.
It can feel a little odd at first, putting a worker up for sale like a sack of grain, but the rules are humane and sensible once you see them. Let us go through the few things that make the people market its own special hall.
What you can list, and how
- Only free workers can be listed: ones who are idle and were not part of your town's founding population. Your founders stay with you; busy workers cannot be sold mid-job.
- Workers trade as whole units. You cannot sell half a person, so every listing is a round number of complete workers.
- A worker keeps their identity when sold: their name and profession travel with them to the new owner. Their remaining lifespan does not - the moment the sale completes it is recalculated from the buyer's town happiness, so a happier town gives the worker a longer second life.
That last point is the one that surprises people, so let us be clear about it. When you buy a worker you are not buying the days they had left in their old town; that figure is wiped clean the moment the sale completes. Their lifespan is recalculated from your town's happiness, exactly as if you had recruited them at home: a happy town gives them a long second life, an unhappy one cuts it short. So do not shop by how much life a worker had left under their previous owner - that number will not follow them to you. What you are really buying is the person and their profession: a ready-made specialist you did not have to train.
This is the one way the people market still differs a little from the goods halls, and it is worth letting it sink in. A sack of grain is a sack of grain; one unit is exactly like the next, so you only ever compare on price. A worker is not quite like that: each one carries a name and, more to the point, a profession, and it is the profession you are really shopping for. Buy the specialist your idle workshop has been waiting on and you have skipped the slow business of training one from scratch. How long that worker then serves you is not set by their old town at all; it is set by yours. So the way to get a long working life out of everyone you buy is simple: keep your own town a happy place to live, and every worker who arrives will settle in for a good long stay.
The housing rule, which catches everyone once
Here is the single thing most likely to trip you up, so let us be very clear. Because workers need somewhere to live, a buyer must have spare housing in their town before they can take any. People are not goods that vanish into a storage pile; they need a room. If you try to buy a worker while every house in your town is full, the purchase is simply refused, and that is the game protecting you from buying someone who would have nowhere to sleep. The fix is exactly what you would expect: make room first.
So before you go shopping for workers, take a moment to check your housing. If you have empty rooms, wonderful, buy away. If every house is full, build a new house or upgrade an existing one to open up rooms, or buy more housing capacity, and then come back for your worker. It is a small extra step, but skipping it is the most common reason a people purchase bounces, so build the habit early and you will never be caught out.
If you think about it, the housing rule is really just the game being humane on your behalf, and once you see it that way it stops feeling like a nuisance. Workers in CoinRepublik are treated as people, not as cargo, and people need a roof. The game refusing to sell you a worker with nowhere to sleep is no different from a sensible employer declining to hire someone they could not possibly accommodate. It also quietly keeps your town honest: it stops you from collecting more hands than you can actually house and put to work, which would do you no good anyway. So rather than fighting the rule, fold it into how you plan. When you know a big hire is coming, raise the housing first, and the purchase will glide through with a room standing ready.
It also helps to know when this hall is most useful to you, so you reach for it at the right moments. The people market shines when you need a specific specialist in a hurry. Say a finished workshop is sitting idle, waiting on a profession you do not yet have, and training one of your own from scratch would take time you would rather not lose. Buying a ready-made worker who already has that profession gets your building running today. On the other side, if you have idle workers you were not part of your founding crew, and you simply have no job for them, listing them turns that spare labour into cash you can put to better use. Used that way, the people market is less a curiosity and more a handy shortcut around the slower business of growing and training your own.
In every other way, the people market behaves like the halls you already know. Like everything else, people trade on your local market in your country's currency, or on the global market in gold, with the same cheapest-first offers and the same flip between the two tabs. The seller pays the usual fees, the buyer pays the asking price, and the worker comes home to a waiting room. Once you have your housing sorted, trading people is just trading, with names attached. Next, the last specialised hall, where you can own a piece of the game itself.
Housing first, always
Before you buy workers, make absolutely sure your town has spare rooms waiting. If every house is full, the purchase will be refused, plain and simple. Build or upgrade a house, or buy more housing, before you go to the people market, and your new worker will have somewhere to live the moment they arrive.