Income verification (as well as employment verification) is not a very reliable tool when screening a tenant for the very reason that jobs are changed frequently and it doesn’t matter how much a person earns.
An example of this can be clearly seen in the auto financing industry. Even though employment data is collected at the time of submitting an auto loan application, the information is not verified the majority of the time. That’s because employment is a given if the credit is good enough.
Don’t think that high earners aren’t exempt from bad credit, they too are often found to have foreclosures, collections, and past due credit cards.
The credit report (aside from the public record and medical collection sections) doesn’t penalize an applicant by how much he or she earns. It is the single most important tenant screening tool because it shows the past seven years of how an applicant manages money to maintain creditor obligations (despite the ups and downs may encounter throughout life such unemployment, divorce, hospitalization, etc.)