People Are Sick of Hearing ‘New Normal’

A university has issued its annual ‘Banished Words List’ for 2022.

With their nominations to Lake Superior State University (LSSU)’s annual tongue-in-cheek “Banished Words List,” people from around the world sent a message to be accurate and concise and avoid error in and exploitation of everyday language.

More than 1,000 of the 1,250-plus nominations of words and terms people want to see banished for misuse, overuse and uselessness for 2022 were colloquial. The No. 1 offender was “Wait, what?” Most frequently found in text or on social media, this ubiquitous imperative question is a failed “response to a statement to express astonishment, misunderstanding or disbelief,” explained a wordsmith. “I hate it,” added another, because the command query is an inexact method to convey the utterer’s uncertainty or surprise. “I don’t want to wait,” either, continued the nominator.

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“That being said” took the No. 4 spot on the list. Nominators cited this phrase as verbal filler, redundant justification and pompous posturing. For instance, “however” or “but—even “that said”—does the job as a transition instead of the wordiness. “Go ahead and say what you want already!” demanded one entrant.

“New normal,” “You’re on mute” and “supply chain” were phrases resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic that made the list of banished words for 2022. “Supply chain issues have become the scapegoat of everything that doesn’t happen or arrive on time and of every shortage,” one person said.

According to the university, the top 10 banished words/phrases for 2022 are:

  1. Wait, what?
  2. No worries
  3. At the end of the day
  4. That being said
  5. Asking for a friend
  6. Circle back
  7. Deep dive
  8. New normal
  9. You’re on mute
  10. Supply chain

LSSU has compiled an annual “Banished Words List” since 1976 “to uphold, protect and support excellence in language by encouraging avoidance of words and terms that are overworked, redundant, oxymoronic, clichéd, illogical, nonsensical—and otherwise ineffective, baffling or irritating.”

Over the decades, LSSU has received tens of thousands of nominations for the list, which now totals more than 1,000 entries. Examples of the winners (or should that be losers?) to make the yearly compilation: “detente,” “surely,” “classic,” “bromance,” and “COVID-19,” plus “wrap my head around,” “user friendly,” “at this point in time,” “not so much” and “viable alternative.”

Nominations came from most major U.S. cities and many U.S. states, as well as Norway, Belgium, England, Scotland, Australia and numerous provinces in Canada.

More information is at https://www.lssu.edu/traditions/banishedwords/.

CalSavers Reports Success in Boosting Retirement Savings for Employees

Its 2021 year in review report says the state-run retirement program has a steady 70% participation rate, and 95% of savers opted into an automatic contribution increase.

CalSavers’ Retirement Savings Board’s “2021 Year in Review Report” indicates that the state-run retirement program in California is seeing a steady 70% participation rate among eligible employees.

The report also notes that in January 2021, 95% of savers accepted the automatic escalation of their contribution rate by 1 percentage point (moving from contributing 5% to 6% for most). During 2021, the program also saw a 127% increase in the number of funded CalSavers accountholders, from 96,000 to 218,000.

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Saver assets, which include saver contributions and investment returns and exclude withdrawals, grew 510%, from $28 million to more than $173 million by the end of 2021. The report says this growth was driven largely by new savers and new contributions. Total contributions, before withdrawals and investment returns, amounted to $187 million.

Thirty-five percent of savers had contributions from more than one employer by the end of the year. CalSavers says this shows the importance of the portability of the program.

CalSavers notes in the report that the retirement program was created to ensure all Californians have a way to save for retirement by requiring employers to participate in the program if they don’t already offer a retirement plan. So, the report notes, it seems natural that CalSavers employers tend to come from industries that do not typically sponsor retirement plans, including from hotels, restaurants, retail and other service industries. Data shows one-quarter of employers that have signed up for the program are in the accommodation and food services industry; 18% are in administrative and support and waste management and remediation services; and 14% are in health care and social assistance.

Early evidence suggests that the state’s mandate for employers that don’t offer a retirement plan to join CalSavers might be driving sizeable growth in private retirement plan adoption among employers. “We are encouraged by this apparent expansion of quality retirement plan access and look forward to more research on this positive development,” the report says.

CalSavers Executive Director Katie Selenski, in an opening letter in the report, said the board, staff and partners applied insights gathered from the early rollout of the program toward scalable system improvements. For example, in May, the CalSavers team executed a seamless transition from the prior default investment policy, which kept the first $1,000 of participant contributions in a money market fund, to a simpler policy moving participants into a target retirement fund after an initial 30-day period in the money market fund. Ninety-seven percent of assets are in the target retirement fund default.

CalSavers has used a gradual rollout system for employers to sign up. The number of registered employers more than tripled in 2021, driven by the June 30, “wave 2” registration deadline, early efforts to reach “wave 3” employers in advance of their deadline in 2022, and ongoing enforcement efforts with late “wave 1” employers.

The program also announced it will start imposing penalties for noncompliant employers beginning this month.

“Employers that do not offer a private retirement plan and who have more than 100 employees are urged to immediately comply with state law and register for the CalSavers Retirement Savings Program before penalties are imposed this month,” the announcement says. “More than 24,000 employers have already registered. The noncompliance penalties of $250 per employee will be levied on employers by the CalSavers Retirement Savings Board in partnership with the Franchise Tax Board, following dozens of notifications sent by letter and email from the program since it launched three years ago.”

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