Depending on EU country employment contract is impossible to get, or while having it you are a workhorse ruthlessly lashed to sponsor and support everyone from "poor underprivileged" to rich unwilling to pay their share, and entire legion of people in-between with more or less social and retirement priviledges. Europe killed employment.

Beyond clear the latter is far more at fault than the former.

Don’t forget the endless importation of workers to compete and degrade your salary juxtaposed with the endless importation of welfare cases to degrade your standard of living.

God forbid if you grew up in a nice place it’s probably overrun with transplant retirees making it unaffordable. If you did the right thing, got the good degree, worked hard, saved up to buy a house and find yourself having to move across the country to find a place with decent living standards? All for the crime of being born too late to get in on the good times.

If I knew this was ahead of me I’d have never bothered - better of a NEET unless you hit it hit with a FANG type salary.

Governments have tools they can use to make this spiral go up or down. The current direction and velocity of the spiral are policy choices. The most basic one would be the interest rate (not available to Italy because of the Eurozone)

What other tools are there available? I believe increasing minimum wage, punishing (through tax) rent seeking would also be viable.

Increasing minimum wage only works if employer surplus is already high. But you can put various controls on rent and building, and you can encourage local production.