Soldiers cost the same on easy and hard. How recruiting unequipped soldiers makes it easier to train them.
Itās easier with naked teams. If you fully equip them itās harder if you need build all the equipment.
Itās easier for replacing a soldier dead, you still have most of his equipment if not all. At Easy you need buy a second time this equipment with the recruit, not at Legendary.
On hard, you still lose your equipment when your soldier dies. So on top of the cost of recruiting new soldier you have to pay for new equipment and like I said cost of recruiting soldier on easy and on hard is the SAME. Synedrion Sniper costed me 110 tech and ~300 materials and some food on Easy, itās the same with Hard. But on hard you donāt get equipment for free with soldier.
Anyway we are not on the topic of the discussion.
Watching a Legendary letās play it was clearly not the case.
Mmm ok if you checked carefully, thatās another bonus of Easy and Normal you lost only equipment destroyed which is relatively rare. Then ok my explanation is wrong on that aspect.
But my comment is still valid with naked teams that are totally possible, but not at Easy/Normal because of forced buy of equipment.
You should double check about equipment lost.
EDIT: And at Legendary, recruit cost is food only but no equipment, thatās very bizarre, it was a release letās play, did first patch change all?
Check this, about 1H 1mn, recruit food only, legendary letās play, release version:
No way any recruit is like that at Easy/Normal but they come with equipment.
EDIT: And I give up find an example of soldier death and equipment not lost, but I think the player checked it carefully and quoted it.
But ok if destroyed during the combat it is probably lost, not if the soldier doesnāt die. At least at Normal/Easy.
Ok just tried it in Legendary and indeed recruits cost only food on Legendary. So it seems when it comes to recruitment Hard is worst difficulty. But naked recruits are benefit only in mid game when you can produce good equipment. Early on being able to get superior equipment with each recruit only jump-starts play-through into much easier mid-late game. And on Easy difficulty player starts with lots of resources. I managed to queue 3 training centers, food production and crew quarters and recruit 2 well equipped soldiers within 20 minutes. All with starting resources and whatever you get from early research and missions.
Thanks for the check.
Easy first month can be harder than Legendary first month but only with auto scaling becoming weird, Easy has so many little bonus, which is cool because I find the game hard enough anyway. 
What makes it easier in first steps at Easy/Normal itās to start with 6 instead of 4. But if a soldier die I donāt agree, and if you play with naked teams I donāt agree.
But yeah Hard seems punishing, probably a bug.
EDIT: Iām month 3, manipulated the auto scaling and get a no cloud game during 1month and 20 days. But now i can garantee you that it is very slow to recruit full new team and then wait level up.
During first month the income is no way as slow than later.
Yup and having more equipment choices and lower recruitment costs makes Legendary actually easier when it comes to creating elite teams. Which is weird. And again begs for a rebalance.
Income is dependent on missions and exploration so it all boils down to how well can you defend havens in late game. But at 3 month mark you should have at least one full team on level 7 and as you said yourself making 5 training facilities gives you 10-15(after upgrade) xp per hour for every soldier in base. That allows training a full team from lvl 1 to level 7 within around 10-15 days (my previous estimates with how fast can you have second team were wrong). Each another elite team lowers difficulty significantly.
I am 15/03 whole world is explored, one location in exploration, one to explore, and a third probably a lair found through scanning. This let only Haven defense but war is far in past, no Lair alive and visible, and I give up let them alive.
Thereās one base left to find probably one of the two last exploration points, lost a base so have 7 now.
I have 7 teams all level 7 and some extra soldiers but all teams but one are 3 soldiers and a vehicle and most stuff is done with 2 planes. The last team is an experiment that will probably scramble, with Tiamat but what the dev thought, I wonder, I was planing use it for lairs but even for that I expect it pointless, sigh.
Next Plan is 2 Helios, one team, but it is going to take a while. The scaning is just to reveal lairs, and i gave up let them alive to try generate more defense, the problem is Iām too spread and need reorganize, will probably have give up on a base too isolated I wait find last base to decide.
But the auto scaling manipulation slowed hugely progression with factions, two at 50+ working on the third and will stop to focus on PP end.
At Easy the level up seems faster max XP is 850, without upgrade itās 85 hours, but yeah I should have now very recently the upgrade, 4 days is very long, but yeah itās in my back, I canāt even hire more and buy two planes, this will take time, and after the level up not in parallel.
Iām not on having more elites but more elite teams. More elites was in past.