Elsewhere, Iowa-based HNI Corp

Elsewhere, Iowa-based HNI Corp The personal outlook among executives rose to 57.17, the best since the 56.10 of October Executive chair 2007 and forefront compares with an average of 56.245 since Dunlap began doing the survey in 2004.

Dunlap’s index comes after manufactures reported some encouraging results.Greenville, Penn.-based Knoll Inc. in October reported an 11.5 percent sales increase for the third quarter, to $292.1 million. It was the first sales increase in several quarters for Knoll, which has facilities in Grand Rapids and Muskegon.

“It's encouraging that industry orders are growing through sluggish job growth and moderating deterioration and absorption in vacancy rates, which suggest that we are benefiting from a normalization of demand from Executive chair post-crisis lows,” Knoll CEO Andrew Cogan said in a recent conference call with analysts. “This leaves plenty of runway for better growth as fundamentals continue to improve.”

Elsewhere, Iowa-based HNI Corp. last month said its office furniture sales grew 3.5 percent for Executive chair the quarter from the same period a year earlier to $387.4 million, and Kimball Inc. last week reported a 7 percent sales increase for the third quarter to $294.6 million.