FRANKFURT—Eurozone companies expect wages to rise by 3 percent or more this year as workers demand to be compensated for inflation and it becomes more difficult to find staff such as builders and software engineers, the European Central Bank said on Friday. Wage growth is a crucial indicator for the ECB in assessing the future path of inflation and setting the timing of what would be its first rate hike in over a decade. The ECB spoke to 74 large companies operating in the euro area outside the financial sector in mid-January, finding that labor market conditions were getting tighter and wages were rising or expected to do so after a near freeze in the past two years. “Typically, contacts said they expected average wage increases to move from around 2% in the recent past to 3% or possibly more this year,” the ECB said in a report. “Significantly higher …