No-paper-year in one's career and getting faculty position

With respect to getting an initial faculty position, I'm not sure that there really is a penalty associated with having "no papers" in a given year, especially with the vagaries of the publishing system. Is a person with one paper in two successive years a stronger candidate than a person with no papers one year, and then three or four the next? Or was it just that one paper took too long in review for one candidate but not the other?

I think one has to look at the overall record to make a fair determination. Besides, the relative significance of the articles will also play a role. One paper in a top journal in your field is probably worth more than two papers in a random low-impact journal.

Spend less time worrying about things that aren't in your control, and focus on what is: doing solid, publishable research and writing a strong application.

I have a colleague who did not have a paper published in one year, but had 13 the next -- he had been writing papers all along, but for some reasons his papers submitted in year X all got accepted quickly, the papers submitted in year X+1 all required multiple rounds of reviews, and were published in year X+2 where also his papers got accepted quickly. So he ended up with none in X+1 and lots in X+2.

That's an extreme case, but everyone understands that getting things published is a stochastic process. What's more important is the number and quality of publications you have.