Good morning everyone, and welcome to SThree's Q3 trading update. Thank you for joining us today. I'm here with our CFO, Andrew Beach, who will take us through the numbers in a moment. Despite the rising macroeconomic uncertainties, we are confident about our strategy and the position of SThree as the only global pure-play STEM talent provider. The continued execution of our strategy has delivered, once again, an excellent quarter of growth. Net fees in Q3 were up 19% year-on-year, and as mentioned in today's announcement, this is particularly pleasing given this is against a very strong comparative period. Given this exceptional performance together with contract order visibility, we now expect the profit before tax for the 12 months to 30th November 2022 will be at least 7% ahead of current market consensus. This growth reflects a good performance across all key regions and STEM disciplines.
In line with our strategic focus on flexible talent, our contract business was up 21% year-on-year. The sixth quarter in a row of double-digit growth. Permanent fees were up 10% year-on-year, a positive movement against strong comparatives. Good progress has also been made in the execution of our wider strategy with the planned investments in our people, talent acquisition, and digital infrastructure moving forward as planned. This investment is designed to underpin our long-term success, with costs starting to be incurred in Q3 as previously indicated. With that I will hand over to Andy who will take us through the numbers for Q3. Andy over to you.
Thank you, Timo, and good morning, everyone. Q3 has seen another period of exceptional growth, with net fees up 19%. As a reminder, Q3 last year was a really strong comparator, being a post-COVID normalized trading period. To deliver 19% growth on top of that is an outstanding performance and reflects our niche expertise. Pleasingly, this growth is across both contract and permanent, and across all regions and all STEM disciplines. We've delivered continued year-on-year growth in our three largest markets, with Germany up 13%, USA up 9%, and Netherlands up 36%. Together, these markets represent 73% of group net fees. We saw growth across all sectors as we maintain our strong and unique position in providing STEM skills. Technology, our largest discipline, grew by 25% year-on-year.
It's worth noting that when we talk about technology, we're referring to placing people with skills in technology across multiple industries. Engineering grew by 25%, while life sciences also grew by 2% against a very strong prior year comparator. Turning now to each region, starting with DACH, which delivered another strong quarter performance, with net fees up 16% year-on-year. Germany, which accounts for 88% of DACH, saw net fee growth of 13% driven by technology, with higher demand for roles within infrastructure, cybersecurity, and leadership and strategic positions and engineering with demand for construction roles. We're also pleased to deliver very strong growth in Austria and Switzerland, both up significantly. EMEA, excluding DACH, saw very strong net fee growth in the quarter, up 26%.
The Netherlands, our largest country in the region, delivered a very strong performance, with net fees up 36%, driven by engineering with increased demand for process and electrical engineers and technology driven by higher demand for project managers, ERP consultants, and data scientists. The U.K.'s strong performance has continued with net fee growth of 25%, the fifth quarter of consecutive growth. This was driven by technology as we help clients deliver on their digital transformation journeys by placing I.T leadership and strategy roles, software developers and software engineers. In the U.S., we saw net fees grow by 9%. This was driven by strong growth in contract, up 16%, offset by a decline in permanent of 10%. This was unsurprising following very strong prior year comparatives that reflected high demand for vaccine-related roles, together with our strategic shift towards contract in the U.S. market.
The overall growth in the U.S. was driven by engineering, with increased demand for roles within electrical engineering and project management and technology, driven by higher demand for roles within Adobe, Microsoft .NET developers, mobile applications and infrastructure. Finally, in APAC, we saw very strong net fee growth in the quarter, with net fees up 40% year-on-year, driven by technology as demand increased for business analysts, application specialists, and infrastructure roles. Average headcount in the quarter was up 13% year-on-year, with period end headcount also up 13% year-on-year. Sequentially, period end headcount was up 4% versus Q2 and up 8% versus the FY 2021 year-end position. Headcount, while growing, remains below pre-pandemic levels, and we continue to focus on hiring in line with our growth opportunities. As a result, we are primarily hiring consultants in contract, niches of our chosen sectors and markets.
Due to the modest growth in headcount alongside record net fee growth, we continue to see productivity well above historic levels, with Q3 productivity up 5% year-on-year against a very strong prior year comparator. As previously guided, we expect productivity to remain above pre-pandemic levels, so it will reduce from the current exceptional levels over time as the group's headcount grows. The contractor order book is up 24% year-on-year, reflecting the strong demand for skilled contractors that we have seen across our markets. Finally, we have a strong balance sheet with net cash of GBP 57 million at the end of August. This, together with the recently refinanced credit facility, provides us with the firepower for continued growth. With that, I'll hand back to Timo.
Thank you Andy. Our group has delivered an exceptional quarter of growth with successes across all key regions and STEM disciplines. Given this performance, we now expect that profit before tax for the twelve months to thirtieth November 2022 will be at least 7% ahead of market consensus. While we remain mindful of macroeconomic uncertainties across global markets with all developments and lead indicators of the group's performance monitored closely, our strong market position underpins our confidence in the medium term to long-term future of the group. Thank you very much for today. We're obviously looking forward to our Q4 update and, we keep obviously everything very close, but you can hopefully see that we're tracking in a very positive way and we're looking forward to the upcoming time. Thank you very much.