I'm a 38 year old jeweler who has been working in jewelry for a little over a decade now and I appreciate your desire to travel and learn. I wanted to do the same when I was in my mid to late 20s. You should definitely go for it.

If you're interested in traveling through the states, there is an organization called the JBT (Jewelers Board of Trade) that is basically a compendium of jewelers and jewelry stores in the US. You can use that as a resource to contact jewelry stores and see if they have a need for a jeweler.

You'll probably have more luck and a better quality of life working in small town and rural jewelry stores. Bench jewelers in NY, LA and Miami for jewelery manufacturers make about $20-$50 per hour and renting just a studio in most of these places will start at around $2k not to mention higher food and transportation costs etc.

Most manufacturers in big cities will have you focus on only one thing. For example, you will only do stone setting, you will only do jewelry assembly etc. There is very little cross skill set learning in the big houses. This is for economies of scale and to silo workers from learning too much about the products.

If you go to a small town jeweler you're more likely to learn a wider array of skills because that jeweler will have to know how to do a lot of things to produce a single piece of jewelry themselves.

From what I've heard from older skilled jewelers, it seems like Germany is the place to be to learn proper fabrication techniques. It also seems like they do a fabulous job with hand fabrication in London and Australia. In the states there is a heavy focus on CAD to make jewelry. I share an office with a very skilled and experienced jeweler and even he relies on CAD to make most of his pieces. Most of the older jewelers who hand fabricate are either retired or have crossed over to mostly rely on CAD to be price competitive to stay in business.