While a slew of economists think that such a recession should be shorter and milder than the last two the US faced, one forecaster thinks that could be a double-edged sword with a small downturn leading to an equally small — and therefore disappointing — recovery.

David Kelly, chief global strategist for JPMorgan Asset Management, called it a "'swamp' recession" in a note, suggesting the economy would likely struggle to get out of what is potentially a mild recession.

"We are on the edge of a recession, we think, and the recession is quite possible in 2023, but it's not like standing on the edge of a cliff. It's like standing on the edge of a swamp," Kelly told Insider.

According to Kelly, the issue is that if the recession is mild, the economy won't need to bounce back very far. 

"The reason is partly of course because recessions are measured from peak to trough, and recoveries start at the trough," Kelly said. "The further you fall, the easier it is to bounce out of that."

Kelly added in a "bad" recession, vehicle sales, inventories, and housing starts drop to low levels and need to be rebuilt, in turn helping the economy rapidly grow. If these areas don't fall by a lot though, then they won't need to recover much.

"And because of that, those cyclical sectors of the economy aren't likely to rebound very strongly because they never fell very far in the first place," Kelly said.

While Kelly calls the upcoming recession a "swamp," some economists and experts are also saying it will be mild. Many also believe it will be shallow, such as KPMG chief economist Diane Swonk, economists surveyed by Reuters, and LPL Financial chief economist Jeffrey Roach. Mohamed El-Erian, chief economic advisor of Allianz, isn't so sure, saying "there isn't enough evidence to suggest it's short and shallow" if the US does enter a recession.

While some economists think a recession could be mild, William Lee, chief economist at the Milken Institute, told Insider that he thinks a recession that the Fed wants would be "even less than mild. It'll be almost imperceptible in terms of the labor market."

The last few recessions took a while for the job market to recover losses. Insider's Andy Kiersz found that it took over six years for the labor market to return to where it stood after the Great Recession — much longer than the recovery seen in earlier recessions. While the pandemic recession was the shortest on record, with the National Bureau of Economic Research dating the downturn from February 2020 to April 2020, it took months for the labor market to recover from the large fall in nonfarm payrolls — returning to pre-pandemic employment levels just this past summer.

Kelly said the next recession may not see unemployment climb as quickly as it did in the Great Recession or pandemic recession, not only because the potential recession isn't likely to be deep, "but also because there's a chronic lack of labor supply," Kelly said.