NEW YORK — A new Associated Press calculation shows that compensation for America's top CEOs has skyrocketed into the stratospheric heights of pro athletes and movie stars: Half make more than $8.3 million a year, and some make much, much more.

CEOs of companies in the Standard & Poor's 500 that filed proxy information in the first half of this year received a combined $4.16 billion in 2006, according to AP's formula.

Yahoo Inc.'s Terry Semel, whose Internet company has lagged behind Google Inc. in profit growth and stock performance, led the pack with total compensation last year of $71.7 million, according to the AP formula used to analyze those filings.

Semel was followed on the AP list by two energy industry CEOs, Bob Simpson of XTO Energy Inc. at $59.5 million and Occidental Petroleum Corp.'s Ray R. Irani at $52.8 million.

The top 10 earners were in disparate industries, but they all had one thing in common: They were paid at least $30 million each in 2006.

The Securities and Exchange Commission required companies starting this year to more completely disclose what they're paying their top executives. But the SEC's approach has been criticized for failing to provide useful figures for investors; the AP, in consultation with leading experts, came up with its own formula designed specifically to isolate the value of all compensation awarded to CEOs in the previous year.

Of the 386 companies on the AP list — those whose fiscal years ended after Dec. 15, and who reported by June 1 under the new SEC rules — only six reported their CEOs made less than $1 million last year.

This year's expanded disclosure requirements also offer a more detailed look at perks given to top executives. They range from multimillion dollar tax payments on behalf of executives to much smaller amounts for household bills, including home alarm monitoring.

The AP formula, developed with advice from pay consultants Pearl Meyer & Partners and Mercer Human Resource Consulting, adds up salaries, bonuses, perks, above-market interest on pay that is set aside for later and what companies estimated the present value to be of restricted stock and options awards on the day they were granted last year.

This differs from the summary compensation formula that the SEC requires companies to use in proxy statements. Some executive pay consultants say the SEC formula is of less value to investors because it includes expenses that companies recognize during the year for current and previously awarded stock grants.

That tends to overstate in some cases, and understate in others, the specific pay decisions boards of directors took during the year, they said.

No matter which formula you use, Yahoo CEO Semel's total illustrates one of the most pronounced recent trends in executive pay: Salary and cash bonuses account for only a small portion of total compensation. Almost all of his pay — $71.4 million — came as stock grants and stock options, according to AP calculations. His salary totaled only $250,001.

Plus, the eventual payouts from stock options handed to chief executive officers could be substantially higher in future years if the overall market keeps floating most stock boats higher.

A recent report by the Congressional Research Service helps to put the executive pay issue into a real-world context. CEOs make, on average, 179 times as much as rank and file workers, double the 90-to-1 ratio in 1994, according to the agency's calculations.

If the minimum wage had risen at the same pace as CEO pay since 1990, it would be worth $22.61 today, according to the Institute for Policy Studies.

Instead, the federal minimum wage will increase to $5.85 an hour on July 24, the first increase in a decade.