Its pretty common for ordinary middle class kids - and remember in the UK a degree is three years not the US four years (or even longer in Europe)

Bit harder now post Brexit though

Between Brexit and COVID most of the typical destinations are out for a while, by the sound of it.

Almost all of the people I knew who did gap years before or after university went to either Australia or New Zealand (from the UK) following a three teaching-year degree with an extra industrial placement year - Australia in particular have (had?) a scheme where someone can live and work for a year with few restrictions provided they are under 30, and could extend that to two years if working in a rural area for some of that time.

It's called the working holiday visa. I went to New Zealand on that after my first job. You have to work in agriculture for 3 months to extend your one year visa.

This is my experience too. The impact on career progression is very minimal when it done intentionally. There are of course people who think it's a lark, but before 2020 there were many folks developing skills that will catapult them forward after they graduated.

I've moved to the US and can see how things are very different culturally with regard to travel. Others have mentioned that the US is not into backpacking. I think it's less about that, and more about travel being a prize for retirement.

I've seen this changing a bit in my time in the US, but it's still the norm for a lot of people who then end up being unable to travel. The US has many more people who are skilled and equipped for a backpacking lifestyle than I found in the UK.

>Others have mentioned that the US is not into backpacking.

I assume "backpacking" in this context tends to mean riding trains around Europe, staying in hostels/couchsurfing/etc.

The US has a fair bit of backpacking and camping in National Parks/Forests/long-distance trails although it's not necessarily a fully mainstream activity. But much less of the "European-style" backpacking.

I think it's partly a difference of scale and ability to get around without a car once you get out of a handful of (mostly expensive) cities.

There is no UK wide education system - first degrees in Scotland are usually 4 years.

In the US, before Jerry Garcia died, it used to be called 'touring with the Dead'

I wonder if maternity/paternity leave laws in UK have any affect on making this more feasible?

My understanding is that workers get a year of maternity leave, a few weeks of paternity leave, and there is some sort of sharing arrangement whereby maternity leave can be used to extend paternity leave.

When maternity/paternity leave ends, the worker must be given their job back.

I'd expect that at many employers they can't just have the work that someone on leave would have done go undone so they are going to have to bring on someone else to do it--someone who knows that they will only be needed until the person they are filling in for comes back from leave.

Thus, I'd expect there to be a need across nearly all industries and at nearly all skill levels for people who want to fill a 6 month to a year opening.

Compare to the US (Federal 12 weeks maternity leave if your company has 50 people, no legally required maternity leave otherwise--individual states sometimes add more), where openings for people to work a temporary job for a few months tend to either be low end jobs or very specialized consulting jobs. The former don't pay enough to afford a 6 on/6 off lifestyle, and the latter are out of reach of most people. There aren't many good middle-class jobs to support 6 on/6 off.

Maternity temping is definitely a thing. Also, hospitality - outside London, the flow of tourists is typically too low in the Winter months to sustain jobs, but picks up significantly in Summer. The Christmas Rush also starts around mid-October now, in terms of recruiting, so that will give you around 3 months of steady employment in bookshops and other retail.

I did this. I worked for the year cleaning toilets. It’s not all rich middle class folk who do it :)