Yeah it was like that before also, but in that underpopulated town of mine, everybody was a descendant of my sim, and all businesses had just the one minimum employee (which were the descendants). However, this makes it that there maybe are just 7, or something, sims in the town, excluded my own household, and that is very few! Preferably, this was part of the fix in the story progression, although I'm yet to test that.