After slavery was abolished in America how difficult was it for black Americans to get a legitimate job?

it was pretty difficult but varied from area to area, You may have more success in a northern area or out west but the south was almost impossible.

For former slave owners' were crushed by southern economic downturn and needed a docile labor force willing or forced to work for low wages. Employers were convinced that African Americans would not work without being forced to by restrictive labor contracts, threat of violence. stringent vagrancy laws that punished Freedmen with jail time if they were not employed by a white person. Former slave owners wanted to rule over their employees with the same authority they had exercised over their slaves.

For Freed people, they were reluctant to work for white employers because they expected to receive their own land from the federal government but that dream died when, President Johnson returned all land that had been confiscated by the Union Army and distributed to the formerly enslaved people by the army or the Freedmen’s Bureau reverted to its prewar owners.

Agents from the Freedmen's Bureau then traveled throughout the South explaining that the government was not, going to give them land. They instead insisted on Freemen signing labor contracts between Southern Planters and freed people. Such contracts were outlined wages and the kind of work to be performed and most labor contracts outlined that workers could not change employers for at least a full year. At first, African Americans resisted signing labor contracts because afraid of signing themselves back to their old masters.

So some even tried to exist on abandoned lands, as self-employed families, by planting crops, hunting, and fishing, This worked for a while because of labor shortages in the South. In the end, most freed people eventually began to work for white employers because they were poor and needed the work.

Disputes developed because freed people's intended on working fewer hours than they had as slaves. They resisted working from sunup to sundown and started to demand Saturday as well as Sunday off as well. This caused labor contracts to make way for sharecropping. sharecropping meant less direct supervision by white overseers. It allowed women to balance their time between field work and doing their own families' domestic tasks. Under sharecropping, freedmen could make more choices about how to use their family resources and labor. Planters opposed any changes from slave conditions but ultimately came to accept sharecropping.

But once again it had major drawbacks. Since sharecroppers bought their food, clothing, and other items from the plantation store, they often finished the year indebt or with very little profit.

It was almost impossible for Freedmen to establish themselves in the south because the south needed cheap labor to keep their economy running. So they forced newly freed people to work for them, sometimes under the similar conditions they had during slavery and if they broke away they would be thrown in jail under one of many newly created Black Codes.