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In south Europe it has been the case for like 20 years. The answer is simple. Businesses don’t pay enough.

People prefer cutting expenses and expectations (nobody in their 30-40s buys a house for example). Businesses cannot find labor or customers. So it is a downward spiral.

Everyone loses.

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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.

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.

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