It's incredibly difficult. I applied for a hundred jobs, finally got one. Now I'm freelance/contract, which I stumbled into by luck (got fired and landed client

It's incredibly difficult. I applied for a hundred jobs, finally got one. Now I'm freelance/contract, which I stumbled into by luck (got fired and landed clients the same day). The best piece of advice I can give, is to keep building side projects to build a portfolio, meet as many people as you can in the field (network), and if possible, expand your job search criteria. There are lots of small companies that have a difficult time finding anyone at all that can work on their code. If you put your time in at some smaller companies, you can build your resume and inch up the ladder. These kinds of jobs aren't glamorous but they've given me a lot of confidence in myself as a programmer. It also helps that teams are usually tiny and you can get a ton of experience doing different things that would be someone else's responsibility at a bigger company.