I believe this is a bug in OS X 10.7. I also have a retina MacBook Pro. Mine is 2.6/16/512, and I noticed that there were 0 page outs but a very large swap file being created (mine was about 8 GB). Closing applications actively reduced the swap space being used. Again there were no page outs being recorded.
I believe this has to do with the sleep image file that also gets housed alongside the virtual memory files in /private/var/vm. When pmset hibernatemode is set to 3 (default for laptops, suspend to RAM and disk), sleepimage gets written upon sleep. This is why it takes a few moments for these laptops to go to sleep: it's writing up to 16 GB of RAM to the sleepimage.
However, changing this setting so that the RAM gets powered on sleep and NO sleepimage is written has resulted in no abnormal increases in swap file size. My suspicion is that the sleepimage is in some cases being preserved post-sleep and prompting the creation of swap files. Perhaps it is this incorrect behavior that is also resulting in the unusually large swap file sizes you are seeing.
From the manpage for pmset, to change to NO suspend to disk you would run in a Terminal:
sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 0
To delete the sleepimage (and reclaim 16 GB on your computer with 16 GB of RAM), run:
sudo rm /var/vm/sleepimage
I restart after these operations just to ensure there's no weirdness. On each power source, you can check the status with:
pmset -g
You should be aware that, in the event of a total power loss (battery dies and not plugged in) the contents of the RAM will not have been saved to the hard drive, and you will lose your work. For me, this is a small but calculated risk because the speed of sleep/wake, coupled with the great battery life and reclaimed storage space. Additionally, for me it seems to have mitigated this issue, which I have not seen on any other Mac laptop I've owned. I wish we had those battery indicator lights, though.
Wired memory is memory that the Operating System has reserved for itself, and it cannot be written to disk.
VM Memory is the amount of space on your disk that the system has allocated for virtual memory. This is slow, and one of the main reasons why running low of free RAM will bring your system to a crawl.
Page ins / outs are when RAM memory is written to the disk (out) and when it is copied back from the disk into RAM (in).
Swap is how much of the VM Memory the system is actually using.
This, and more, can also be found here: http://www.interrupt19.com/2009/06/15/os-x-memory-usage-explained/ and here: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1342?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US
Make sure you have enough free space on your disk for the OS to swap as needed. A good rule of thumb is that 10% of your total disk capacity should always be free. Furthermore, have you noticed any particular apps giving you trouble? Those tools you're using can be powerful for narrowing down what is causing your problem. Also, if you are running Chrome and Safari simultaneously, I suggest you only run them one at a time, as they both tend to be memory-hungry in my experience.
Best Answer
This is normal behavior. You are not experiencing any memory issues in your screenshot above. What I suspect is happening is that OS X is creating some placeholder of sorts to enable swap memory, rather than actually using swap memory here. I have never seen a zero in the swap memory section, unless I have just restarted and open the Activity Monitor window fresh, and even then, I rarely see zero.
With Mavericks and Yosemite, the way the OS uses memory changed a bit. Essentially, the OS takes all the memory, and then manages it out as needed. So, our traditional way of looking at the memory report in Activity Monitor is not really valid. Due to this, Mavericks added the 'Memory Pressure' gauge, to give you an idea of when you have a limitation caused by memory. In your screenshot, you have a green memory pressure. For more see this answer.
Ars Technica has a nice description of this 'memory compression' in their Mavericks review:
http://arstechnica.com/apple/2013/10/os-x-10-9/17/