You do not mention your state. However, if you work, and you continue to draw unemployment, you MUST report your wages made from other work and do so according to a certain format, or you will be nabbed very quickly for unemployment fraud.
In general, all claims weeks for unemployment purposes (regardless of when you are paid or how you are paid) run from Sunday through Saturday. You report it the week it is worked, not the week you receive the paycheck. You have to make a few guesses sometimes to get the correct amount you've made.
In many restaurant jobs, you make a smaller amount than minimum wage paid hourly and they assume tips will bring your pay up to at least minimum wage. Each state will have certain ways they'll want to deal with this situation.
But you will probably need to assume that, even though you make a lesser amount and tips, when reporting wages that you made at least minimum wage for each hour you worked, and figure up how many hours you have worked from Sunday through Saturday night midnight of the week you are reporting. In the first part of the bi weekly certification, where it asks for did you work and how much did you make, you report minimum wage, gross wages. In other words, if you worked ten hours in a week, you'd report it at your state's minimum wage times ten. Any time your weekly wage exceeds the amount you could make in straight unemployment insurance, you'd be disqualified for that week and would need to be reopened the next week you make less than you could draw in weekly benefit.
But in fact, what you really need to do is ask the people in the unemployment system of your state EXACTLY how they want this done. Take down the name of the person you talk to, and the date you talk to them. Then you begin doing exactly what they told you to do in regard to reporting your wages. That way, if the wages turn up and they're examining you for unemployment fraud, you'll be able to document what you did and why. They will have exactly how much you made at your waitressing work, and it's tricky to get the amounts just right in these situations. They won't accept it that you were told what to do on the internet and it turned out to be wrong, or that you "just didn't understand" or that you "called and called and couldn't get in to talk to somebody." Make every effort to get it right before you have an overpayment and a problem concerning how to report these wages.
