The story
Phono-semantic matching of Japanese サラリーマン (sararīman), itself a wasei eigo (和製英語; pseudo-anglicism) derived from salary + man.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
salaryman
Today it means: An employee, a worker; now especially a Japanese white-collar worker who works long hours yet has an insignificant position within the corporate hierarchy. Full definition →