Obama's 2nd-term Cabinet takes shape

Commerce - vacant

Secretary John Bryson resigned in June for health reasons. Rebecca Blank, an economist, has been acting secretary since then.

Possible replacements:

- US Export-Import Bank President Fred Hochberg

- Elizabeth Littlefield, president of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation

- Xerox Chief Executive Ursula Burns

- Steve Case - co-founder of America Online, is part of Obama's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, an advisory group of corporate executives, labor leaders and academics.

- Daniel Doctoroff - chief executive of the financial news service Bloomberg and a former deputy mayor of New York City under Mayor Michael Bloomberg, founder of the eponymous company.

- Jeff Zients - acting director of Obama's budget office and a former management consultant who could play a role should the president seek to reorganize the Commerce Department and the Office of the US Trade Representative into a consolidated, business-oriented government agency.

Labor - vacant

Secretary Hilda Solis, the first Latina to head a major US federal agency, announced plans to resign. It is not clear who is in the running to replace her.

Energy - could soon be vacant

Speculation is rampant that Steven Chu will soon resign after a tumultuous time at the helm of the Energy Department. Chu, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, took the fall for the administration over a failed loan to solar-panel maker Solyndra, which Republicans trumpeted as a symbol of government waste and mismanagement.

Possible replacements:

- Christine Gregoire - a former Washington state governor, Gregoire has been mentioned as a potential candidate for three energy-related positions in Obama's Cabinet: the Environmental Protection Agency, Interior and Energy.

- Byron Dorgan - former North Dakota senator who was a member of the Senate Energy Committee and focuses on energy issues at the Bipartisan Policy Center, a Washington think tank.

- Bill Ritter - former Colorado governor who helped reform regulations on oil and gas in his state, and now advocates for responsible oil and gas drilling from a post at Colorado State University.