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hereshoping, it's very common now for people to write three separate papers that together count as the dissertation. These can be co-authored or individually authored; one of the three chapters is the job market paper. Most people are the sole authors of all three chapters, but coauthoring is becoming more common among grad students.
You are correct in your impression that the general advice is that your job market paper should be your own. However, there are some exceptions to this. For example, Nakumura and Steinson have cowritten their job market papers and nearly everything else (but they are married and doing a joint job search, so this may make more sense for them!). There was a job candidate from Berkeley speaking at U-Mich last week who had co-written his job market paper with another PhD student.
The downside of coauthored job market papers is obviously that people will wonder what part of the work you really deserve credit for. This is especially true if you work with a faculty member on their area of expertise. When the job market paper is coauthored with your advisor, then your advisor will write about your specific contributions in the letters of recommendation.
Also, the trade off isn't as simple as "co-author and get published or work alone and have things in progress." Even for faculty members, it takes a long time to get things published. And while having publications is obviously a plus on the job market, you still need to have ideas and plans for future work.
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