US employers are facing a considerable shortage of skilled workers and have started to go after students as young as middle schoolers to build the kind of labour force they will need in the future.

The issue has become a boardroom concern, with gaps already seen in high-demand areas like engineering, health care and accounting, executives and analysts said last week.

"What will inevitably happen (is) big employers are not just going to be in the business of finding labour, they'll be in the business of making labour," said Marcel Legrand, Monster Worldwide Inc.'s senior vice president.

So far, companies spend about $100 million a year on "making labour" efforts, a small piece of total recruitment spending of about $7 billion a year. But that figure will grow in coming years if the efforts show results.