Technology company chiefs also did well. Marissa A. Mayer of Yahoo was awarded $36 million. Marc Benioff, founder and chief executive of Salesforce, received a $33.4 million package. And Mr. Khosrowshahi of Expedia, the lucky high earner of 2015 according to Equilar, had compensation of $94.6 million. (Mr. Khosrowshahi is a director of The New York Times Company.) His package, reflecting a new five-and-a-half-year contract, was almost exclusively stock that vests over time, so much of its value is closely linked to Expedia’s share price.

Defenders of executive pay cite factors like those as evidence that seemingly astronomical rewards really don’t add up to that much money. In a statement, Sarah Gavin, an Expedia spokeswoman, said Mr. Khosrowshahi “has been a transformational C.E.O. for Expedia,” adding that much of his compensation was structured to give him “an additional incentive to create long-term shareholder value.”

All told, tech and media C.E.O.s made up 17 of the highest-paid 30 spots on Equilar’s list last year.

According to Bureau of Labor Statistics data compiled by the A.F.L.-C.I.O., the average worker in the United States who doesn’t have management responsibility earns $36,875 a year. By that measure, the average chief executive on the Equilar list makes roughly 523 times the average worker salary.

It’s not a perfect comparison. Executive pay includes stock grants, often with multiyear payouts and performance targets, while low-paid workers rarely receive stock, let alone long-term incentive packages. Nonetheless, the discrepancy is stark. A bank teller at Wells Fargo making that average wage would have to work more than half a millennium, until 2539, to earn what that company’s chief executive, Mr. Stumpf, who made the average among chiefs on the Equilar list, earned last year.

Incomplete as such ratios may be, chief executives will have to get used to them. Starting in 2018, companies will be required to disclose the ratio of their C.E.O.s’ pay to the median compensation of their employees. The Securities and Exchange Commission will allow companies significant leeway when interpreting their own data, which could keep ratios down.

In the interim, data from other sources offers a hint of what to expect. PayScale, a company that makes enterprise software, has surveyed more than 80,000 workers about their pay. Using that data, it is possible to roughly approximate ratios of the sort that the S.E.C. will soon require.