Last month, 1,571 jobs were filled in Michigan. They may have gone unnoticed because these jobs were filled one, two, three at a time at small businesses across the state.

"What would the state do to find one company with 1,571 jobs?" Rob Fowler, president and CEO of the Small Business Association of Michigan, asked Tuesday during a visit to Traverse City. "The state would bend over backward and roll out the red carpet for that company."

The jobs number comes from a new website Fowler unveiled at the Traverse City Area Chamber of Commerce, MichiganJobsInsight.com. The site tracks job creation by Michigan small businesses.

Fowler emphasized that the website does not present a complete picture of all the data involved. The site, for example, does not subtract from that March job total the number of people laid off.

"These are anecdotes," he said, "but they're anecdotes at a broad enough level that they truly are telling a story."

One story it tells is that jobs are being created "across the board," with no emphasis on a specific industry, technology or region. "I think that actually speaks to a stable kind of recovery, as opposed to a one-industry-driven kind of recovery," he said.

It's an attempt, Fowler said, to "change the narrative about job creation" and tell "the story that doesn't get told" — that job creation happens only when a big company moves to town or a plant expands.

"Policymakers talk often about small businesses being the engine of the economy, the backbone of the economy, but it's always hard to really quantify that," Fowler said. "Part of what we're trying to do is to show the public where jobs really come from."

Month-to-month data on job creation, combined with individual stories of small businesses reported by nine regional publications produced by Detroit-based Issue Media Group, will help the public appreciate the role of the small-business owner in economic recovery, Fowler said.

How small businesses are doing also can be used as a barometer for overall recovery. Among the small businesses hoping to add to the statewide jobs gain of 2,984 so far in 2012 is OneUpWeb. The Traverse City digital marketing company began in 2000 with three employees. Today, it is ready to hire its 50th worker.

Lisa Wehr, OneUpWeb's founder and CEO, said tracking her company's growth could indicate a wider recovery. A couple of years ago, when the economy first started to go south, marketing budgets were the first to go, Wehr said. So OneUpWeb had to weather some lean times.

Now, she said, companies are again beginning to find their misplaced marketing budgets.

"We've seen pretty good growth over this quarter — much better than we've seen over the past couple of years."

Other small-business representatives at Tuesday's website unveiling reported similar stories of growth. Great Lakes Trim in Williamsburg, east of Traverse City, makes automotive interior components. Al Coaster, the company's quality control manager, said Great Lakes Trim plans to add 15 workers to its current 65 in the next six months.

Bonnie Alfonso, president of Traverse City-based Alfie, thinks her 19-employee logo gear company is a decent barometer of recovery. Larger companies use her services as a kind of reward for their employees, she said.

"There's a level of optimism that I haven't seen in a long time," Alfonso said.

State Rep. Wayne Schmidt, R-Traverse City, sees MichiganJobsInsight.com as a way to track how government is doing after changes that were supposed to have created a better climate for business in Michigan — including getting rid of the Michigan Business Tax.

"We did all these tax cuts for the jobs," he said. "Now we can see the jobs created."